SLOW Movement

NY Times: Philanthropy by the Rest of Us

December 22, 2011

Philanthropy by the Rest of Us

By OLIVIER ZUNZ

Charlottesville, Va.

CHRISTMAS SEALS, first sold 104 years ago in a Delaware post office, transformed the treatment and control of tuberculosis, one of the most feared killers of the age.

Just as important, they produced a revolution in philanthropy. At that time, the 1 percent of the late Gilded Age, men with names like Carnegie and Rockefeller, were creating major new philanthropic institutions. Christmas Seals, in a way, was the response from the other 99 percent: by marketing something as inexpensive as a stamp and using the proceeds to attack a major disease, the founders of the Christmas Seals program demonstrated the collective power of the American public.

The idea reached the United States by chance. The Danish-born immigrant Jacob Riis, well known as a pioneer photographer of tenement life, had already seen six of his brothers die of tuberculosis by 1904 when he received a Christmas letter from Copenhagen.

In addition to the traditional postage stamp, it bore a peculiar seal, the brainchild of a Danish postal clerk, Einar Holboll. Rather than rely on a few deep pockets to pay for a new hospital for children with tuberculosis, he sold the seals for two ore (there are 100 ore in a Danish krone) each. Patrons placed the seals alongside regular stamps to raise awareness of the campaign.

Three years later, Riis reported the story of this highly successful “penny subscription” in the magazine The Outlook, urging its duplication in the United States. Riis pointed to the fact that “no millionaire” had yet come forth “to endow” the fight against tuberculosis in America, and went on to say that “no millionaire” was “wanted,” that the job would be “far better done by the people themselves.”

Emily Bissell, a member of The Outlook’s editorial board and an active fund-raiser for the Red Cross, took him up on the suggestion as a way to support a tuberculosis sanitarium near Wilmington, Del. She borrowed money from friends to print the seals, persuaded the Wilmington postmaster to sell them in the post office lobby, and sold the first Christmas Seals in December 1907. Aided by an adroit publicity campaign, she raised $3,000 that first year, 10 times her original goal.

It was such a success that the next year the Red Cross made the seals available in post offices around the country, packaged with the message, “These stamps do not carry any kind of mail but any kind of mail will carry them.” That year, Christmas Seals raised $135,000; by 1916, they raised $1 million, all through purchases of less than $1.

The Christmas Seals campaign demonstrated the philanthropic power of the grass roots. It not only raised money, but called attention to tuberculosis. In a few years, the number of volunteers for the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis soared to 500,000 from 5,000. In 1919, three million child “crusaders” served in the Modern Health Crusade to raise awareness of the disease.

Equally important, this people’s philanthropy mobilized public health officials, attracted the attention of politicians — President Theodore Roosevelt publicly endorsed Christmas Seals — and even mobilized the 1 percent. The Rockefeller International Health Commission joined the fight against tuberculosis during World War I.

Mass philanthropy took off in a wide variety of fields. Community chests sprang up in every major city, and the Red Cross took volunteerism and grass-roots philanthropy to new levels to support the troops abroad. By the 1930s, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced the March of Dimes, volunteers knew how to canvass entire populations in large and small cities alike. Today, it is possible for practically every citizen willing to spend a little money to respond directly and almost instantly to world emergencies simply by sitting down at a computer or picking up a cellphone.

At the same time, mass philanthropy has become increasingly news-driven, as givers respond to earthquakes and tsunamis with an outpouring of resources but then lose interest as these disasters move off the front page. During the holiday season, our phones ring incessantly with appeals from scores of nonprofits. That we give to some of them is critical for our society. But the new ease with which we can transfer money does little to deepen the philanthropic spirit or generate long-term commitments.

What’s missing is both the commonality and intensity of purpose displayed by the original Christmas Seals campaign. Interestingly, these are two qualities exhibited by Occupy Wall Street, a movement that seems unable to harness its members’ sense of outrage to purposeful action.

It might be worthwhile for all those who sympathize with the occupiers of Zuccotti Park and other plazas and squares around the country to learn from the example of the Christmas Seals campaign. We have no shortage of urgent causes that will benefit from the energy of the grass roots. The seals campaign showed that the 99 percent, even when feeling disenfranchised, are hardly powerless to repair the safety net — and even influence the actions of the 1 percent.

Olivier Zunz, a professor of history at the University of Virginia, is the author of “Philanthropy in America: A History.”

ST: We are not vulnerable? They can beseige you. You'll be dead

Think

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Jan 16, 2011

We are not vulnerable? They can besiege you. You'll be dead

Hard Truths will be launched by Singapore Press Holdings' book publishing subsidiary Straits Times Press on Friday. It is based on 16 interviews with Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew. We reproduce here excerpts on MM Lee's views on Singapore and being Singaporean.

(Clockwise, from right) MM Lee, his press secretary Yeong Yoon Ying, ST reporter Rachel Lin, deputy review editor Chua Mui Hoong, deputy editor Zuraidah Ibrahim, editor Han Fook Kwang, news editor Ignatius Low, reporter Robin Chan, deputy political editor Lydia Lim, and MM?s principal private secretary Chee Hong Tat. Singapore spends 5 to 6 per cent of GDP on defence every year because Singapore?s vulnerability is very real, says MM. -- ST FILE PHOTO

 

Lee was hardly the easiest person to interview. He was blunt at times, and often cantankerous and combative. Although he had agreed to a no-holds-barred interview format, he did not conceal his annoyance when he felt that the questions reflected perspectives that he had no patience for.

The journalists before him then seemed to become, in his eyes, surrogates for his ideological opponents and were dressed down accordingly. On other occasions, though, he seemed to relish the exercise, sometimes prefacing an extended discourse with 'Have I told you this story?' or coming prepared with a clutch of anecdotes and a choice phrase for the week.

Visible too were the signs of a man coping with the frailties of age. One day, he shuffled in wearing sandals. His toes had an infection. After a trip to Malaysia, where he had fallen off an exercise bicycle in his hotel in Kuantan, he appeared with an improvised therapeutic device: a heating pad strapped to his leg with neon-coloured skipping ropes.

After converting to a floor bike, his stiffness moved to his back and the pad followed. Several times, he would use a spritzer to moisten his parched throat.

Once, during a trip to Armenia, he developed pneumonia as he was having problems swallowing and food had gone down his windpipe.

Not once, however, did he lament about being tired or weary. The interviews drew not only from his surfeit of memories, but also from the latest developments in Asia and the world. He was obviously keeping abreast of things, whether it was China's green energy ambitions or the elections in Japan. While he was less in command of the specific details of domestic policies, he was more than familiar with their general thrust. He kept himself scrupulously up to date on world events. He read the papers every day and in the office, his radio would always be tuned to the BBC World News Service.

At the final interview, we asked him about the leaders he admired the most. In past speeches and his memoirs, he had mentioned Deng Xiaoping. This time, he also named Charles de Gaulle, the president of the French Fifth Republic, and Winston Churchill, Britain's wartime prime minister.

He quoted Churchill's famous 'We shall fight on the beaches' speech. He recounted how de Gaulle had fought the odds to rouse and rally his people at times of near-defeat.

As he talked, his eyes gleamed, he gritted his teeth. He clenched both his hands into fists and his voice curdled in his throat before spilling forth. In that moment, the same fierce determination he showed as a young leader in the 1950s and 1960s when rallying his own people flashed across his face.

One remembered all over again that Lee was born a fighter. In that moment too, one could see the scale of the terrain that he pictured himself battling in. Not for him the quotidian concerns of a country content with its creature comforts. This was a leader who had overseen events unfold in grand terms, life and death, danger and escape, success and failure - of a people, of a country.

Singapore is not in that moment of epic change. Will it have in its sinews the same fighting spirit as its founding father when that time comes? It is a question only the young can answer.

Q Some commentators say that you have created Singapore in your image, including 'always living in fear of a catastrophe'. Why are you so worried that it could all fail?

I'm concerned that Singaporeans assume that Singapore is a normal country, that we can be compared to Denmark or New Zealand or even Liechtenstein or Luxembourg. We are in a very turbulent region. If we do not have a government and a people that differentiate themselves from the rest of the neighbourhood in a positive way and can defend ourselves, Singapore will cease to exist.

It's not the view of just my generation but also those who have come into Defence, Foreign Affairs ministries and those who have studied the position. Whether it's Ng Eng Hen, who was a surgeon, or Raymond Lim, formerly an academic and a lawyer by training, or Vivian Balakrishnan, an eye surgeon, they all understand now the circumstances that conscribe us. If we ignore those circumstances, we'll go down the drain.

We have not got neighbours who want to help us prosper. When we prospered, they for many years believed we were living off their resources. It was only when they became aware that our economic policy of welcoming foreign investments made the difference that they were sufficiently convinced to also do likewise.

We are an upstart in this region because we survived for so long and I believe we can survive easily another 50 to 100 years given the international environment, provided we have a strong system that enables us to maximise our chances.

Q What do you mean by a 'strong system'? Is it another phrase for the People's Action Party (PAP) continuing to be in power?

Whether it's the PAP or any other government does not interest me. I'm beyond that phase. I'm not out here to justify the PAP or the present government. I want to get across just how profound is this question of leadership and people and the ethical and philosophical beliefs of the leadership and the people.

Q Are we really as vulnerable as you suggest? Critics would say you make things seem so dire that so many things practised elsewhere, including in small countries, such as political competition, will not be available here.

No, we are not preventing competition. What we are preventing is duds getting into Parliament and government. Any person of quality, we welcome him but we don't want duds. We don't want Chee Soon Juan, or J.B. Jeyaretnam. They're not going to build the country. But if any serious man turns up and forms an alternative equal to us, I say, 'Good'. Then we are getting a proper alternative. But look at the candidates they put up.

Now, are we not vulnerable? If we are not vulnerable, why do we spend 5 to 6 per cent of GDP (gross domestic product) year after year on defence? Are we mad? This is a frugal government, you know that well.

We dug a deep tunnel for the sewers at the cost of $3.65 billion in order to use the sewage water for Newater, to be independent.

We are not vulnerable? They can besiege you. You'll be dead. Your sea lanes are cut off and your business comes to a halt. What is our reply? Security Council, plus defence capabilities of our own, plus the Security Framework Agreement with the Americans.

They stopped sand. Why? To conscribe us. As Mahathir (former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad) says, 'Even at their present size they are trouble, you let them grow some more they will be more trouble'. We've got friendly neighbours? Grow up.

Why would we put a strong minister in Defence if it's not important? He's the strongest minister in the Cabinet next to the PM, toughest, most capable. We have always put a strong man there. Do we parade our vulnerabilities? We are living in an adult world. Why do we have peace? Because it is not cost-free if you hit us. If you hit us we will hit you and the damage may be more on your side.

Q But this point about not being a normal country...

Forgive me for saying this: Assuming that I'm just nearly as intelligent as you are, but I've lived more than 85 years and I've been through all these ups and downs and I've spent all my life since the age of 32 figuring out how to make this place work, right?

First, I believed and said the only way it could work was to join Malaya because otherwise we cannot live. Our water, our raw materials, imports, much of the exports come from Malaya. That was at that time. We couldn't get to Malaya because the Tunku didn't want the Chinese population.

We worked around that and we joined Malaysia. Then we found ourselves trapped, from a communist Singapore to a Malay-ultra Malaysia. Has Malaysia changed? How has it changed?

Why did I break down when we got out on the 9th of August? Because I left behind tens of thousands of people who had joined our rallies, and I knew that they were going to be handicapped, again a minority and leaderless. We provided the leadership. So when you tell me we're not vulnerable, I say, 'Oh, God!'

You speak to the SAF (Singapore Armed Forces) commanders. Why do they do this - two years of every young man's life, 4, 5 to 6 per cent of GDP and a frugal government that builds up reserves? We do this because of hallucinations? Or because that's the only way we can be left alone to survive and prosper?

Why do you think we spent all this effort to solve our water problem until we became specialists in water? Mahathir knew we needed Johor water. So when the water agreement was going to end in 2011 for Tebrau and Skudai, we knew we would be short. Then we discovered Newater. He thought we were bluffing. You say we're not vulnerable?

We should not gloss over our worries. They are real problems. And we are what we are because we can stand up for ourselves. If we can't, we've had it. The Security Council passes resolutions. So what? Who goes to Kuwait's rescue? The US. Why? Because of oil. Why? Because next stop would be Saudi Arabia.

Who's coming to our rescue because of water? The US? No. We rescue ourselves. Either the media grows up, especially the young reporters, or we're going to bring up a generation that lives in a dream world of security when none exists...

I had to make this society produce results, then we will become prosperous, then we can have a strong defence, and the world has a place for us. If you believe we're like Norway or Sweden or Denmark, then we won't survive.

Singapore is an 80-storey building on marshy land. We've learnt how to put in stakes and floats so we can go up for another 20, maybe over a hundred storeys. Provided you understand and ensure that the foundation is strong. Crucial is interracial, interreligious harmony. Without that, quarrelling with one another, we are doomed.

Q Do you worry about this place after you are no longer around?

After I'm dead?

Q I mean, all these calculations...

No, all these calculations have been discussed and re-discussed.

Q But they originate from you.

Yes, but every member of the Cabinet and definitely every defence minister and all the critical ministers understand exactly what our position is.

Q But the external situation will change. There will be new challenges and new calculations will have to be done. Original thinking will be required.

But they have the capabilities. They may not be found all in one man. But it wasn't in me alone. I had a group of men who together had multi-sided perspectives, like a Rubik's Cube.

Q It's not tested, their capacity for original thinking.

How can you say it's not tested? They are getting out of this recession with great skill. They are handling it with great skill. I'm just standing by seeing that this is all right. They worked out the solution.

I did not, I cannot read the facts and figures of the Ministry of Finance and MTI (Ministry of Trade and Industry) and EDB (Economic Development Board) in detail. I had to read them when I was Prime Minister, but I'm not any longer. I look ahead for over-the-horizon problems and opportunities.

Look out for more exclusive excerpts in The Straits Times and The Sunday Times next weekend.

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Interracial harmony crucial

'Singapore is an 80-storey building on marshy land. We've learnt how to put in stakes and floats so we can go up for another 20, maybe over a hundred storeys. Provided you understand and ensure that the foundation is strong. Crucial is interracial, interreligious harmony. Without that, quarrelling with one another, we are doomed.'

MM LEE KUAN YEW

ST: an hour @ the museum (playgrounds in Singapore)

Life!

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Jan 7, 2011

an hour @ the museum

 

In this weekly column, we visit museums and art spaces and highlight what you must see if you have only an hour to spare.

School Of Hard Knocks by The Little Drom Store is a photography exhibition of playgrounds of the past by graphic designer Stanley Tan and his wife Antoinette Wong. The couple started taking pictures of these playgrounds about four years ago.

The works capture and celebrate the nostalgia associated with these playgrounds which are vanishing all too soon.

The exhibition is part of the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival.

Where: Esplanade Tunnel, 1 Esplanade Drive MRT: City Hall, Esplanade When: Till Jan 23, 5.45am - 12.15am Admission: Free Tel: 6440-8115 Info: www.singaporefringe.com

Deepika Shetty

1 THE PELICAN

Period of construction - 1970 to 1980

Location - Dover Road

The couple wanted to look at playgrounds which once sparked children's imaginations. Decorated with colourful mosaic tiles and unpadded, these playgrounds saw many children suffering injuries and knocks.

2 THE ELEPHANT

Period of construction - 1970 to 1980

Location - Pasir Ris Park

Playgrounds today lack a theme but in the past, animal-centric playgrounds helped parents educate their children while the little ones played. Children enjoyed simple activities such as sliding down the elephant's trunk at this playground in Pasir Ris.

3 THE SEAL

Period of construction - 1970 to 1980

Location - Dakota Crescent

This playground with a seal design featured a colourful suspension bridge that appealed to more adventurous kids, who could slide down or climb up a pole.

4 THE DRAGON

Period of construction - 1970 to 1980

Location - Toa Payoh

This playground with a dragon motif had a colourful suspension bridge as the dragon's body. Sand helped cushion the fall from the slide.

5 THE WATERMELON (SMALL)

Period of construction - 1970 to 1980

Location - Tampines

Other themes which inspired playgrounds built in Housing Board estates in the 1970s were fruit such as watermelons, which were used as motifs to promote healthy living as well as to represent tropical fruit familiar to Singaporeans.

6 THE CLOCK

Period of construction - 1970 to 1980

Location - Bishan

The design of the playgrounds in later years was influenced by nursery rhymes for children such as Hickory Dickory Dock, and became more sophisticated and Westernised.

7 THE TRISHAW

Period of construction - 1970 to 1980

Location - Eunos

The trishaw was a reflection of Singapore's past mode of transport as well as an easily identifiable element of Asian culture.

ST: 'Nature corridor' proposal for railway land

Prime News

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Oct 9, 2010

'Nature corridor' proposal for railway land

Nature Society's idea incorporates cycling paths, recreational areas

By Jeremy Au Yong

The Malaysian KTM railway line would be a kind of 'expressway' for plants and animals under the society's proposal. -- ST PHOTO: ALPHONSUS CHERN

 

THE Nature Society of Singapore is close to finishing a proposal to convert the 40km stretch of Malayan Railway land here into a green corridor.

It would contain cycling paths connecting different neighbourhoods to the town centre, and recreational spaces. It would also be home to many of Singapore's native plants and animals.

The proposal seeks to preserve the railway tracks, which the society regards as an important part of Singapore's history.

But some property analysts say the proposal will be a hard sell. And even if it is approved, a nature corridor can at best last for a decade or two. The railway corridor will inevitably be developed, for there are sound reasons to incorporate the land into development plans.

Nature Society president Shawn Lum, however, stresses that there are environmental benefits to a nature corridor: 'If we could have green strips along the railway land, we would be connecting existing green spots from Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve in the north all the way to almost Mount Faber.'

As a green corridor, the railway land would serve as a sort of Central Expressway for plants and animals. It would allow the movement of species previously cut off from each other, increasing the genetic diversity of local wildlife.

The idea of such eco-passages is not new to Singapore. In May, the Land Transport Authority called for tenders for a 50m-wide green bridge to connect the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve and Central Catchment area. The two reserves are separated by the Bukit Timah Expressway.

The idea of using the 400ha of Malayan Railway land in the same way was hatched very shortly after the announcement was made in May that Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his Malaysian counterpart Najib Razak had agreed to move the Tanjong Pagar Station.

Mr Lum said the Nature Society had long regarded the railway land as a valuable stretch of greenery. It occasionally organised walks there.

A few days after the announcement, Nature Society vice-president Leong Kwok Peng wrote in to The Straits Times Forum page suggesting that the land be converted into a nature corridor.

Since then, others have written in with similar ideas. One suggested converting Tanjong Pagar station into a transport hub for those walking or cycling into the city. He suggested having bike lock-up, pay-shower and locker facilities at the station.

The proposal is due to be submitted to the authorities in the next two weeks.

Mr Howard Shaw, executive director of the Singapore Environment Council, told The Straits Times he supported the idea. Though he noted the need to consider the opportunity cost of not developing the land, he said having a green belt should not be seen as a waste of money.

'There are things like quality of life and Singapore's reputation as a garden city that are intangible and valuable in their own way,' he said.

Property veteran Nicholas Mak, executive director of SLP International Property Consultants, however, is doubtful the proposal will fly. He had earlier estimated that millions of square feet of buildings could be put up on the land. He used the swamp land in Punggol as an example.

'Punggol is not in town, yet all the swamp land there has been bulldozed. What are the chances this piece of land on the city fringe would be preserved? It's not even virgin jungle,' he said.

Mr Colin Tan, research and consultancy director of Chesterton Suntec International, agreed that the land would ultimately be developed, but he felt there was hope for the society's proposal for the next 10 to 20 years.

'At the moment, there's no urgency to develop that area. The Government is focused on building up places such as Marina Bay. In the short term, it's looking quite good for the proposal, but I don't think it can be left as a green corridor permanently,' he said.

jeremyau@sph.com.sg

ST: Calls to preserve train station - Tanjoing Pagar Railway Station

News

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Sep 26, 2010

Calls to preserve train station

Heritage buffs say Tanjong Pagar site has rich history and must stay open to the public

By Amanda Tan

These four statues at the front of the station represent the four economic pillars of Malaya during colonial times - agriculture, commerce, transport and industry. In those days, many people were illiterate and art was a way of conveying powerful messages to them. --ST PHOTOS: MARYANNE TAN

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Now that the land around the Tanjong Pagar railway station has been given to Singapore, the next question is: What should the Government do with the site?

While there are no concrete plans for the station, which sits on prime land, people familiar with the place are calling for it to remain open and accessible to all.

A group is lobbying for it to be turned into a transportation museum, much like how some people wanted to turn the old Collyer Quay into a maritime museum.

Whatever it is, experts and people who have a special attachment to the station feel it should retain some of its old flavour, to honour its historical significance.

Above all, it should remain a public space, one that people from all walks of life can enjoy.

Said Ms Carolyn Seet, 38, who started a petition in July to turn the station into a transportation museum: 'The railway was for everyone - rich or poor, or those who could not afford other means of travel in the past. So we must keep it accessible and not so posh that only a select few can go there.'

The assistant general manager of an IT firm hopes to send her petition to the Prime Minister's Office once she garners 1,000 signatures. She has now collected about 300 online.

She also started a group on social networking site Facebook that now has more than 1,000 followers, many of whom have fond memories of the station. Ms Seet herself rode on the trains on her first trip out of the country almost 30 years ago.

'I feel a sense of loss, with so many of the places I knew as a child gone or demolished. We've lost so much in one generation. If we lose that nostalgia and memories, then we have less to grasp of our past,' said the mother of two young boys.

In a land swop agreement reached last week between Singapore and Malaysia, Malaysia received six land parcels in Marina South and the Ophir-Rochor area in exchange for giving up six Malayan Railway sites in Tanjong Pagar, Kranji, Woodlands and Bukit Timah.

Development of the land around the station will be carried out by M-S Pte Ltd, a 60-40 joint venture between Khazanah Nasional and Temasek Holdings.

Tanjong Pagar station reminds people of an important point in local history, said Dr Chua Ai Lin, a historian at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

'The railway was crucial to our economic development as it was the main mode of transporting key commodities such as tin and rubber from across the peninsula.'

Singapore's port thrived because of the goods the country processed and exported internationally. Trains supported this by being efficient in transporting large volumes of goods, she said.

Dr Lai Chee Kien, an assistant professor at NUS' architecture department who has done research on the railway's history, said the place represents the social relations between Singapore and Malaysia.

'Our connections go beyond politics: We have economic, geographical, historical and social ties,' he said, adding that pre-1965 history has not yet been taught comprehensively to the younger generation.

He hopes the space can be used to help educate the public about this aspect of history.

Heritage buffs also want the building to be gazetted as a national monument. Said Mr Ho Weng Hin, director of Studio Lapis, an architectural conservation specialist consultancy: 'It is great architecturally, historically and socially. Its significance in these three areas is very high,' he said.

The 36-year-old feels the land should be developed holistically because 'the value is in the entire whole'. This includes the greenery along the railway tracks.

Mr Ho also urged developers to consider the environmental impact when deciding what to do with the site.

He has done extensive research on the station for a book he is co-authoring on architecture in Singapore from the 1920s to 1970s. Published by the Singapore Heritage Society, it is expected to be out in stores by the end of next year.

Modelled after great early 20th century train terminals in the United States - in which modern technology was used to create huge spaces - the Tanjong Pagar station was designed by D.S. Petrovich of Swan & McLaren, one of Singapore's earliest architectural firms. It opened in 1932.

'No matter what it becomes, it should not be a place for a limited few,' argued Mr Ho.

'The new use should be meaningful not just to future generations, but to people who identified with the building in the past.'

tamanda@sph.com.sg

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Keep it accessible

'The railway was for everyone - rich or poor, or those who could not afford other means of travel in the past. So we must keep it accessible and not so posh that only a select few can go there.'

MS CAROLYN SEET, 38, who started a petition to turn the station into a transportation museum

===

News

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Sep 26, 2010

Worthy of preservation

Most will agree that the Tanjong Pagar Railway Station and the railway line are historically significant. Those familiar with the place say there are some important artefacts there. We take a look at what these are, and why they are of value.

 

Four statues at the front of the station, each with an emblem above and the letters F, M, S and R

FMSR stands for Federated Malay States Railways, as the railway operator was previously called, and refers to the consolidated train operation that allowed for interstate travel. It tells the story of developments in then Malaya - economically, politically and socially.

The railway enabled trade and allowed the British to expand their political clout and economic power from the 1870s to 1930s.

The four statues also represent four economic pillars - agriculture, industry, transport and commerce. They are a powerful statement to all who see that this station has enabled these elements to flourish.

Mr Ho Weng Hin, an architectural conservation specialist and consultant, said art was one way of conveying messages to the public, who were mostly non-literate.

The same message of economic activities is repeated on the murals inside the station.

Murals inside station

Each measuring about 8m by 3m, the murals depict the economic activities of the people of pre-war Singapore and Malaya.

The murals capture scenes such as shipping, agriculture, mining and rubber cultivation.

It is interesting to note, Mr Ho said, that the murals were made of the same material that made Singapore rich - rubber.

Keeping the murals in the same space as the passengers' waiting hall conveys a sense of grandeur, and arrival to Singapore as a principal city in British Malaya, said Mr Ho.

Key token system

The key tokens were exchanged between train drivers or crew whenever they reached a station or intersection. Gaining the key token signified permission to proceed, based on security and traffic conditions.

Introduced in 1885 when the Keretapi Tanah Melayu (KTM) trains first rolled out, the system is still being used in several regions along the trains' routes.

Only the Central route, which includes stops such as Kuala Lumpur, has switched to electronic signalling systems, which are more efficient and require less manpower to handle.

Mr Mohd Fazil Ismail, senior corporate communications manager at KTM Berhad, said the key token system will be fully replaced with the electronic system in the next 10 years.

Push trolleys

Push trolleys were introduced in 1885 and were used by station inspectors daily to check the railway. They used to be pulled by coolies, or general workers of that time.

Last used in the 1960s, they have now been replaced by higher-functioning machines such as the EM20, which monitors track strength, the diesel trolley, and the ultrasonic trolley, which can detect problems with the tracks.

Amanda Tan

ST: If I rest, I'll slide downhill fast - MM

Think

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Sep 12, 2010

If I rest, I'll slide downhill fast: MM

Nearing 87, he reflects on ageing, his legacy - and life with his wife

By Seth Mydans

MM Lee speaking at an open conversation to commemorate Singapore Botanic Gardens' 150th Anniversary last year. Always physically vigorous, he combats the decline of age with a regimen of exercises and an hour-by-hour daily schedule of meetings, speeches and conferences both in Singapore and overseas. -- ST FILE PHOTO

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'So, when is the last leaf falling?' asked Lee Kuan Yew, the man who made Singapore in his own stern and unsentimental image, nearing his 87th birthday and contemplating age, infirmity and loss.

'I can feel the gradual decline of energy and vitality,' said Mr Lee, whose 'Singapore model' of economic growth and tight social control made him one of the most influential political figures of Asia. 'And I mean generally, every year, when you know you are not on the same level as last year. But that's life.'

In a long, unusually reflective interview last week, he talked about the aches and pains of age and the solace of meditation, about his struggle to build a thriving nation on this resource-poor island, and his concern that the next generation might take his achievements for granted and let them slip away.

He was dressed informally in a windbreaker and running shoes in his big, bright office, still sharp of mind but visibly older and a little stooped, no longer in day-to-day control but, for as long as he lives, the dominant figure of the nation he created.

But in these final years, he said, his life has been darkened by the illness of his wife and companion of 61 years, bedridden and mute after a series of strokes.

'I try to busy myself,' he said, 'but from time to time in idle moments, my mind goes back to the happy days we were up and about together.'

Agnostic and pragmatic in his approach to life, he spoke with something like envy of people who find strength and solace in religion. 'How do I comfort myself?' he asked. 'Well, I say, 'Life is just like that.''

'What is next, I do not know,' he said. 'Nobody has ever come back.'

The prime minister of Singapore from its founding in 1965 until he stepped aside in 1990, Mr Lee built what he called 'a First World oasis in a Third World region' - praised for the efficiency and incorruptibility of his rule but accused by human rights groups of limiting political freedoms and intimidating opponents through libel suits.

His title now is Minister Mentor, a powerful presence within the current government led by his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. The question that hovers over Singapore today is how long and in what form his model may endure once he is gone.

Always physically vigorous, Mr Lee combats the decline of age with a regimen of swimming, cycling and massage and, perhaps more important, an hour-by-hour daily schedule of meetings, speeches and conferences both in Singapore and overseas.

'I know if I rest, I'll slide downhill fast,' he said.

When, after an hour, talk shifted from introspection to geopolitics, the years seemed to slip away and he grew vigorous and forceful, his worldview still wide ranging, detailed and commanding.

And yet, he said, he sometimes takes an oblique look at these struggles against age and sees what he calls 'the absurdity of it'.

'I'm reaching 87, trying to keep fit, presenting a vigorous figure, and it's an effort, and is it worth the effort?' he said. 'I laugh at myself trying to keep a bold front. It's become my habit. I just carry on.'

His most difficult moments come at the end of each day, he said, as he sits by the bedside of his wife, Kwa Geok Choo, 89, who has been unable to move or speak for more than two years. She had been by his side, a confidante and counsellor, since they were law students in London.

'She understands when I talk to her, which I do every night,' he said. 'She keeps awake for me; I tell her about my day's work, read her favourite poems.'

He opened a big spreadsheet to show his reading list, books by Jane Austen, Rudyard Kipling and Lewis Carroll as well as the sonnets of Shakespeare.

Lately, he said, he had been looking at Christian marriage vows and was drawn to the words: 'To love, to hold and to cherish, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, till death do us part.'

'I told her, 'I would try and keep you company for as long as I can.' That's life. She understood.' But he also said: 'I'm not sure who's going first, whether she or me.'

At night, hearing the sounds of his wife's discomfort in the next room, he calms himself with 20 minutes of meditation, reciting a mantra he was taught by a Christian friend: 'Ma-Ra-Na-Tha.'

The phrase, which is Aramaic, comes at the end of St Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, and can be translated in several ways. Mr Lee said that he was told it means 'Come to me, O Lord Jesus,' and that although he is not a believer, he finds the sounds soothing.

'The problem is to keep the monkey mind from running off into all kinds of thoughts,' he said. 'A certain tranquillity settles over you. The day's pressures and worries are pushed out. Then there's less problem sleeping.'

He brushed aside the words of a prominent Singaporean writer and social critic, Catherine Lim, who described him as having 'an authoritarian, no-nonsense manner that has little use for sentiment'.

'She's a novelist!' he cried. 'Therefore, she simplifies a person's character', making what he called a 'graphic caricature of me'. 'But is anybody that simple or simplistic?'

The stress of his wife's illness is constant, he said, harder on him than stresses he faced for years in the political arena. But repeatedly, in looking back over his life, he returns to his moment of greatest anguish, the expulsion of Singapore from Malaysia in 1965, when he wept in public.

That trauma presented him with the challenge that has defined his life, the creation and development of a stable and prosperous nation, always on guard against conflict within its mixed population of Chinese, Malays and Indians.

'We don't have the ingredients of a nation, the elementary factors,' he said three years ago in an interview with the International Herald Tribune, 'a homogeneous population, common language, common culture and common destiny.'

Younger people worry him, with their demands for more political openness and a free exchange of ideas, secure in their well-being in modern Singapore.

'They have come to believe that this is a natural state of affairs, and they can take liberties with it,' he said. 'They think you can put it on auto-pilot. I know that is never so.'

The kind of open political combat they demand would inevitably open the door to race-based politics, he said, and 'our society will be ripped apart'.

A political street fighter, by his own account, he has often taken on his opponents through ruinous libel suits.

He defended the suits as necessary to protect his good name, and he dismissed criticisms by Western reporters who 'hop in and hop out' of Singapore as 'absolute rubbish'.

In any case, it is not these reporters or the obituaries they may write that will offer the final verdict on his actions, he said, but future scholars who will study them in the context of their day.

'I'm not saying that everything I did was right,' he said, 'but everything I did was for an honourable purpose. I had to do some nasty things, locking fellows up without trial.'

And although the leaves are already falling from the tree, he said, the Lee Kuan Yew story may not be over yet.

He quoted a Chinese proverb: Do not judge a man until his coffin is closed.

'Close the coffin, then decide,' he said. 'Then you assess him. I may still do something foolish before the lid is closed on me.'

New York Times

---

Facing the effects of ageing

'I can feel the gradual decline of energy and vitality. And I mean generally, every year, when you know you are not on the same level as last year. But that's life.'

MINISTER MENTOR LEE KUAN YEW

Assessing the political attitude of the young

'They have come to believe that this is a natural state of affairs, and they can take liberties with it. They think you can put it on auto-pilot. I know that is never so.'

On how younger people worry him with demands for more political openness and a free exchange of ideas, secure in their well-being in modern Singapore

Handling those difficult moments

'She understands when I talk to her, which I do every night. She keeps awake for me; I tell her about my day's work, read her favourite poems.'

On his wife Kwa Geok Choo, 89, who has been unable to move or speak for more than two years. He says his most difficult moments come at the end of each day as he sits by her bedside.

ST: The importance of being resilient

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May 30, 2010

The importance of being resilient

Foreign talents who make S'pore their home can add to our resilience and success

By Lee Wei Ling

Earlier this month, on May 14, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew addressed the China Executive Leadership Academy in Pudong. He told the audience what he had said to Deng Xiaoping when Deng visited Singapore in 1978.

Deng had congratulated my father on the progress Singapore had achieved. My father replied: 'We are the descendants of the landless peasants of the southern provinces. You have the zhuangyuan (the top candidates in the imperial examinations), the literati, artists, the cultured and the talented. Whatever we have done, China can also do - and do better.'

Deng did not reply. When he returned to China, he established special economic zones. In 1992, when he visited Shenzhen, he declared: 'We should learn from the world, especially Singapore, and do better than them.'

I disagree with my father that the huaqiao (overseas Chinese) are inferior to the intellectuals of China. He has long believed that those from Jiangsu region are descendents of the top mandarins who were sent to rule over or retire in this well-endowed region. Jiangsu is often called 'the home of fish and padi' because the land is fertile and the fish, abundant.

My father thinks that the genes for intellectual ability multiplied in this region. I doubt the theory because men who are good at passing examinations based on memorising Confucian classics do not usually select their wives and concubines according to their intellectual abilities, but rather their beauty.

The genes for academic intelligence are thus soon diluted. Furthermore, most of the mandarins and their families would not have faced adverse and dangerous situations, the acid test for courage and resilience.

Resilience in psychology refers to the positive capacity of people to cope with stress and catastrophes. It also includes the ability to bounce back to normal after a setback. Commonly used synonyms for resilience include 'hardiness', 'resourcefulness' and 'mental toughness'.

What the ancestors of the huaqiao might perhaps have lacked in academic ability - or more accurately, the opportunity to receive an education in the Chinese classics - they more than made up with their courage and resilience.

It took courage and a sense of adventure for our ancestors to make the dangerous journey to Nanyang (the South Seas or South-east Asia). The journey was extremely uncomfortable.

If an epidemic broke out on board the ship, many would die. Those who made it to Singapore were quarantined on St John's Island the duration of their quarantine, depending on the diseases they were suspected of carrying.

Thus the early immigrants from China to South-east Asia were selected for courage, resilience and physical fitness; plus an ability to survive despite the difficult circumstances.

All this must have involved some degree of intelligence, though that intelligence may not have resembled classical academic intelligence as measured by standardised tests.

My paternal great-great-grandfather travelled from his ancestral Hakka village of Dapu to Xiamen, from where he set sail to Singapore in a tongkang. A small sailing boat with two square sails, a tongkang is not very seaworthy in a storm.

After arriving in Singapore, great-great-grandpa worked for a shopkeeper and later married the shopkeeper's daughter, also a Hakka. Eventually, he earned enough to return to Dapu and buy himself a minor mandarinate (class 8).

His wife, however, had never been to China and had no desire to leave Singapore. So she hid her children, and her husband returned to China alone.

To our wise great-great-grandma, my family owes our good fortune. None of my nuclear family has any desire to visit our ancestral village of Dapu.

The Chinese immigrants who arrived in Singapore after 1920 came in steamships, which were faster and safer than tongkangs.

The newcomers were called sinkek, which means 'new guests' in Hokkien. Upon arrival in Singapore, their village associations would provide them with temporary lodging and other bare essentials.

My paternal grandmother considered the sinkek inferior Chinese compared to the Peranakan (which means 'children of the country' in Malay). When I spoke to my father in preparation for this article, I understood why she felt that way.

The Peranakan, in her view, were the descendants of the earlier, tougher immigrants who travelled to South-east Asia at a time when sea migration was an extremely hazardous affair.

All four of my grandparents were descendants of the earlier waves of immigrants. The customs, food and the language of the Peranakan - also known as Nonyas or Babas - was influenced to some extent by Malay culture.

Those who migrated later, the sinkek, faced fewer hazards, but life was not a piece of cake for them either. Those who survived and thrived under such conditions must have been resilient individuals.

Hence, I do not think the Chinese in South-east Asia are inferior to Chinese in China, including the descendents of intellectuals in Jiangsu.

My ancestors may not have passed imperial examinations. Indeed, all the womenfolk among my ancestors were not schooled. But their children, my uncles and aunts, have done well in life, as have their grandchildren.

Personally, if I had to choose between pure intelligence and resilience, I would choose the latter.

I myself am resilient but not outstandingly intelligent, and I am hopeless at art of any kind.

My father risked his life to join forces with the communists to eject our colonial masters - and then fought the communists. He and my mother knew how ruthless the communists would have been if he had lost.

Indeed, some of the wives whose husbands joined my father in the fight for independence were very cold towards my parents. But when the PAP came into power and Singapore flourished, these wives became friendly again.

That China will overtake Singapore some day is a given. With a population of 1.3 billion versus Singapore's 5 million, it is but a matter of time. As I have no children, I do not worry too much about this eventuality.

But for the sake of my brothers' children and those of my friends, I can only hope that Singapore will be successful in attracting foreign talent and that these foreigners will make Singapore their home and add to our resilience.

The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute. Send your comments to suntimes@sph.com.sg

ST: Keeping our heritage alive

Think

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May 30, 2010

Young S'poreans passionate about

Keeping our heritage alive

Desire to save aspects of history before they disappear altogether

By Tan Dawn Wei

Mr Tony Tan (above) runs Betel Box hostel in heritage-rich Joo Chiat, while Dr Zeehan Jaafar wants to preserve and promote Singapore's eco heritage. -- ST PHOTO: ALPHONSUS CHERN

View more photos

It always irks Mr Tony Tan when people accuse his home country of being soul-less, boring and expensive.

In fact, it riled him so much that he decided to prove them wrong. Seven years ago, the travel-savvy information technology professional, who was working in Britain, decided to come home to set up a hostel.

He rented from his parents a 1920s conserved shophouse in the heart of culturally rich Joo Chiat and started Betel Box with a friend.

Betel Box was not going to be just another cheap stay. Mr Tan wanted it to encompass and showcase six facets of Singapore: culture and heritage, food, art and design, nature and conservation, architecture and social studies, and finally, outdoor and adventure.

'I felt so strongly about doing it. It's important because travel agents refuse to debunk these three myths about Singapore,' said the eloquent, chatty 38-year-old who studied economics at University College London.

He did not want tourists to see only Sentosa or the Night Safari either. 'Singapore is a country with its own identity. We want to engage these travellers on a different level,' he said.

So, he got a travel agent licence and has been operating highly popular food and cycling tours that even Singaporeans sign up for.

'Although I'm an accommodation provider, it is the social environment that is most important to me and that is reinforced by the things we do, the way we decorated the hostel and the way we deal with people,' said the committee member of the non-profit Singapore Heritage Society.

His food tours - free for his guests and $50 for everyone else - is a six- to seven-hour chomp jaunt of over 20 dishes around the Joo Chiat area, filled with history nuggets of the food, architecture and how Singaporeans live.

Even those he hires have to fit a certain criteria, top of which is having 'a passion for Singapore'. Conservationists, artists and volunteers of social groups have all been members of his staff.

As Singapore continues to race towards economic excellence and cosmopolitan chic, young Singaporeans are looking back to the country's past and taking a shine to what was once seen as a fuddy duddy topic: heritage.

At the National University of Singapore, Professor Peter Ng teaches a Singapore studies module, Natural Heritage of Singapore, that is open to students of all faculties.

The class size has grown from 400 to 600 in three years and the school has had to cap the number because there are only 600 seats in the lecture theatre.

'It tells us that heritage is something that younger people are interested in and want to know more about,' said Professor Ng, 49, who has been on a crusade the past year to get a natural heritage museum built.

But this growing enthusiasm for the country's natural and man-made endowment is not just confined to the classroom.

Like Mr Tan, young Singaporeans - many born post-Independence - are doing their bit in pockets of this city and in cyberspace to preserve, document and showcase a slice of Singapore's heritage.

In the past few weeks, award-winning filmmaker Royston Tan has been sending out blasts on social networking site Facebook, asking people to share their memories of old places in a new film project. The docu-drama, scheduled for a possible television release later this year, will be a collection of scenes from long-forgotten corners of Singapore.

'Singapore's old places and our childhood places are disappearing every single minute. We want to invite people from all walks of life to help us form a collective memory of all these old places that matter to them,' explained the 33-year-old director of 15: The Movie and 881.

Since he started spreading the word, ideas have been pouring in, such as the last drain where one can catch wild fighting fish, an old confectionery stuck in time and Singapore's oldest bus-stop.

'We are always in transition. Sometimes, you don't even realise the changes that have taken place subtly,' said Mr Tan, who grew up in a kampung in Lorong Chuan.

Anyone interested in contributing ideas can e-mail wyna@chuanpictures.com

An area of growing interest has been in natural heritage, as seen by the public-driven movement to save Chek Jawa in the early 2000s, when planned land reclamation works threatened to destroy the area's rich biodiversity.

That groundswell of public opinion led to the Government making a U-turn on the redevelopment plans and promising to leave it alone for the next 10 years.

'There is a hunger from various stratas in society to have a connection,' said Dr Zeehan Jaafar, 32, president of Blue Water Volunteers and a Chek Jawa activist.

It was around the time the Chek Jawa campaign took off that a group of young people, including Dr Zeehan, banded together as a marine conservation group.

Blue Water Volunteers was registered as a society in 2006, although the group had started the ball rolling since early 2000 on an ad hoc basis. Run by volunteers, it wants to complement research activities and increase awareness of local marine habitats, such as coral reefs.

The core group of volunteers at Blue Water numbers about 50, most of them young working professionals below the age of 40.

'There's something to be said about preserving something that belongs to you, your own heritage,' said Dr Zeehan, a lecturer in biodiversity at the National University of Singapore.

'Our reefs, despite being so impacted because of development, are very diverse. We're still discovering new species.'

Blue Water's ReefWalk programme, where about 10 volunteer guides take 100 people on a chartered boat to Kusu Island for some coral reef spotting, is always overbooked. The group is training a fresh batch of volunteer guides and will restart the programme soon.

Dr Kevin Tan, president of the Singapore Heritage Society, is not surprised that young Singaporeans are getting in on the act of keeping a slice of Singapore's heritage.

'There's so much interest because many young Singaporeans are trying to find their own identities. In order for you to figure out your identity, you start looking at the present and back at the past,' said the 48-year-old, who runs his own consultancy on law and heritage.

'The government can only take care of state-centric heritage whereas younger people are looking at alternative history, history on the ground. These are ephemeral, not monumental. The state can't do this kind of thing but the public can.'

In one case at least, the state and the individual have come into a happy partnership.

In 2007, Dr Alan Prem Kumar, a senior scientist at the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore at the National University of Singapore, and his 38-year-old brother, Indu, decided they wanted to do something for their Malayalee community.

'My brother and I were chatting one day and we realised that we didn't know our own history,' said the 47-year-old, who has spent 20 years in the United States.

'We didn't know the stories of the Singapore Malayalee community and our children would probably also not know. The stories could just die by the next generation instead of being passed down.'

The duo mooted the idea of a Malayalee Heritage Centre and approached Nominated Member of Parliament Viswa Sadasivan, who roped in Mr Predeep Menon and Mr Jaya Prakash Nair as advisers.

Mr Menon is chief executive officer of RSP Meena Architects Planner and Engineers and Mr Nair is director of Pandisea Pte Ltd.

A concept plan was born and Dr Kumar wrote to President SRNathan, who invited him to the Istana. As it turns out, there were plans for an Indian heritage centre.

He is now working with the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts on the Malayalee component of the all-encompassing museum.

He wants it to engage the young, so interactive features are in the plans. He, too, is learning about his heritage along the way and while the centre will take another two years to complete, he is not losing steam.

'We started it in 2007, and we hope to finish it,' he said.

dawntan@sph.com.sg

ST: Old F&B brands are being vitalised by a younger generation of leaders to remain fresh and exciting

Lifestyle

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Feb 7, 2010

Brand new

Old F&B brands are being revitalised by a younger generation of leaders to remain fresh and exciting

By Huang Lijie

Collective food memories hold a sacred place in food-loving Singapore. Whether one gushes about an early memory of tucking into a warm flaky curry puff from Polar Puffs & Cakes or reminisces about devouring a handsome slab of sizzling steak from the beloved steakhouse Jack's Place, chances are one will find kindred foodies with similar experiences.

Which is why when heritage food and beverage (F&B) brands, under the charge of a new generation of leaders, try to make themselves over to keep pace with changes in lifestyles and consumer habits, they are faced with the challenge of preserving tradition and nostalgia, and staying up to date.

Mr Joseph Baladi, chief executive officer of the brand consultancy BrandAsian, says: 'The new generation of leaders at these companies need to understand the role that a brand has played in the success of the business.'

Dr Prem Shamdasani, 50, associate professor of marketing at the National University of Singapore Business School, adds: 'The new leadership needs to constantly validate the relevance of the brand to the market and customers, and make changes to update it while reinforcing its unique heritage so that it remains fresh, exciting and sustainable.'

Restaurants such as Han's and Muthu's Curry, for example, have revitalised their brand and won praise among diners.

Fashion sales manager Pat Lim, 53, a customer of Han's for 30 years, says: 'The new design of the shop is welcoming and cosy. The menu has also expanded so much that I eat there at least three times a week without getting bored of the food.

'And now that it has opened 24-hour restaurants in Upper Thomson Road and Holland Drive, I have been able to pop in for a late-night snack.'

Mr Lim Yen Hui, 39, owner of a graphic design firm who has been dining at Muthu's Curry for 10 years, says: 'I took my kids to its new restaurant in Dempsey Road and they liked it. It's good to see the same high-quality cooking but food presented in a more modern way.'

Indeed, F&B operators with a long history have updated themselves in various ways, from redesigning the stores and introducing snazzier logos to tweaking the brand name and business strategy.

LifeStyle interviews the new generation of leaders at seven established F&B brands to find out how they are working to remain a part of Singaporean's collective food memory.

lijie@sph.com.sg

===

Feb 7, 2010

Han's

Han?s new generation of leaders include (from left) Shaye Han, Daryl Chai, Foo Yong Hong and Han Tong Siew. All, except Chai, are related to the founding family. -- ST PHOTOS: SAMUEL HE, ST FILE

Hainanese- style Western fare attracted patrons to Han?s cafe outlet in Funan Centre in 1989.

Who: Ms Shaye Han, 32, quality assurance manager, Mr Foo Yong Hong, 30, area manager, Mr Han Tong Siew, 30, outlet manager, Mr Daryl Chai, 45, area manager (Han's and Hanis)

What: Han's was started in 1980 by Mr Han Choon Fook, a Hainanese and former civil servant, at The Arcade in Collyer Quay. His six younger siblings are partners of the cafe and bakery, which specialises in Hainanese-style Western food such as pork chops and pastries. Hanis, a halal version of Han's, opened in 2006.

Where: Nineteen Han's outlets, including 1 Pickering Street, 01-03,

Great Eastern Centre, tel: 6438-3959, open: 7am to 10pm daily; and five Hanis branches, including 01-22, Wilkie Edge, tel: 6338-1903, open: 24 hours

Mr Han Choon Fook, 66, is grooming a team of leaders to take over the family- owned business and the talents under his mentorship have risen to their biggest challenge to date, opening the newest Hanis cafe and bakery at the Wilkie Edge mall last month.

The team is made up of Mr Han's daughter, Shaye, his nephews Yong Hong and Tong Siew, and Mr Chai, who is not related to the founding family but who worked previously as a retail manager in Malaysia.

The name of the halal cafe and bakery, Hanis, was chosen by Mr Han as a play on the original brand name, Han's.

The chic 150-seat outlet dressed in shades of grey, red and white, cost more than $1 million to set up and is the group's second largest eatery after its flagship outlet at Great Eastern Centre.

Ms Han, who is single and joined after graduating in media studies from Murdoch University in Perth, says: 'We handled this project on our own and it is significant because the kitchen at this outlet is the central cooking and baking facility for our halal arm, which we plan to expand.'

The company had a turnover of $30 million last year and plans to open seven new eateries this year under both the Han's and Hanis brands.

To adapt to the changing lifestyle of diners, it also began operating some Han's cafes round-the-clock in 2007.

Mr Foo, who finished his O levels and joined the company after national service, turned the outlet in Upper Thomson Road into Han's first 24-hour eatery.

He says: 'I noticed a demand, especially among younger diners, for eateries that stay open through the night and I believed that a 24-hour Han's would increase sales.'

In three months, its first 24-hour cafe began drawing a steady stream of young diners as well as young families.

The Holland Drive branch of Han's and the Wilkie Edge branch of Hanis are also open round the clock.

It successfully implemented the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points food safety management system at its Great Eastern Centre and Budget Terminal branches last year and it is rolling out the scheme at its other outlets.

Ms Han says: 'With this system in place, it will be easy for us to replicate the operations overseas, where we have received many franchise inquiries.'

While there are no definite plans on when the group will branch out of Singapore, overseas expansion is something the team is gearing towards.

===

Feb 7, 2010

Polar Cafe

ST PHOTO: SAMUEL HE

Who: Mr Jonathan Cheah, 33, chief operating officer, Polar Puffs & Cakes

What: Started by Mr Cheah's maternal grandfather, Mr Chan Hinky, a migrant worker from China, in 1926. Its first store, Polar Cafe in High Street, quickly became known for its flaky-crust curry puffs.

Where: 32 shops including Block 490, 01-14, Toa Payoh Hub, tel: 6356-7787, open: 8am to 10pm weekdays, 9am to 10pm weekends, as well as 64 counters in convenience stores at Esso petrol kiosks

Snow falling against an austere green background of a brand logo hardly conveys the warm fuzziness one feels when biting into a toasty curry puff.

So when Mr Cheah took over the helm of the family business in 2007, the logo was redesigned to better express its brand vision of 'bringing love and joy to every occasion'. The original logo was conceived by a brand consultant.

The new logo sports a heart-shaped flower bud and the lettering, in a casual font with rounded edges, comes in shades of blue-green and lime-green.

Mr Cheah, who is single, says: 'Polar has been in Singapore for so long, we need to attract a younger crowd through a new look and product range.'

The doctoral graduate in electrical and electronic engineering from Nanyang Technological University quit his research job to join Polar because he likes the dynamic nature and quick pace of the food business.

To learn the ropes, he read books on business management.

Under his watch, Polar's cakes have shed their dated designs and boast a sleeker look. The flavour of its puffs and cakes has similarly evolved to keep pace with consumers' changing tastebuds and diets. New additions include black pepper chicken puff.

The opening of Polar bistros at four locations, including Toa Payoh Hub last year, marks his efforts to engineer a return of the bakery to its roots as a cafe.

After Polar moved from High Street to OUB Centre in Raffles Place in 1986, it began operating as a takeaway business. He says: 'Puffs and cakes are something people have for tea but we want to grow our business, and since we already have space at the store, we felt we should start a bistro to cater to the lunch and dinner crowds.

'We tried to switch to a cafe set-up earlier but it never succeeded because we sold takeaway food like sandwiches instead of a proper dine-in menu.'

The bistro offers a range of dishes such as pastas, pizzas and baked rice, priced around $6 to $8.

To enhance product safety, Polar adopted the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points food safety management system last year.

And it is installing an IT system that will allow it to assess in real time how various factors, including price promotions and ingredients cost, affect its business.

It cost the company, with a turnover of $22 million last year, 'a substantial amount' to implement these improvements.

He says: 'The second generation of family members running Polar did ask why I was spending money on all these changes instead of doubling profits but I felt it was necessary to consolidate the business first so that our long-term survival is not jeopardised.'

===

Feb 7, 2010

Bee Cheng Hiang

ST PHOTO: ONG WEE JIN

Who: Mr Daniel Wong, 41, group general manager, Bee Cheng Hiang

What: The popular bak kwa shop was started by Mr Wong's grand uncle, Mr Teo Swee Ee, a hawker from China, in 1933, in Chinatown.

Where: 32 outlets here, including its newest at 313@Somerset, B3-12, tel: 6509-4709, open: 10am to 11pm daily, and 124 outlets in five Asian countries, including China, Taiwan and Malaysia

Doing away with convention has helped Mr Wong grow the family business in bak kwa, a traditional barbecued meat treat.

The computer science graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has been helping out with the business since childhood, says: 'Although the business was doing well when I joined the company in 1993, it had set ways of doing things.

'We could not offer discounts as customers might think we were lowering our prices because something was wrong with our bak kwa.'

He was an assistant manager then and he disagreed with the no-discount policy, believing that price promotions would instead sweeten the deal for consumers.

He tested this out when Bee Cheng Hiang opened a shop in West Mall in August, 1998. It was the year after the Asian financial crisis hit and sales had dropped. He says: 'I convinced the management that the opening of a new store was good reason to offer a price promotion and the amount of sales generated from the 20 per cent discount was beyond our imagination.

'Everything that was barbecued went straight onto the weighing scale and was sold immediately during the two-day promotion.'

Since then, price promotions have become its sales strategy, with the smaller profit margin offset by large volumes of sales.

He says: 'We gradually offered discounts throughout the year, timing them with the Great Singapore Sale, the Mid-Autumn Festival and Christmas so that people had reasons beyond Chinese New Year to buy bak kwa.'

The company has also reinvented itself through its store design.

Since 2003, its retail shops have undergone a makeover, which saw its dated red walls and green tile designs replaced by sleek white interiors and a glass-enclosed grill that showcases the barbecuing of its sweet meat.

Product innovation has been key to the brand's rejuvenation as well.

Its Gourmet Bak Kwa, which uses premium pork belly instead of the usual cuts of pork hind leg, has become one of its bestsellers since it was introduced in 2003.

The idea for it, says Mr Wong, who is married with three children aged eight to 12, was sparked by the popularity of wagyu beef among connoisseurs and a desire to find an equivalent for bak kwa.

Its Mini EZ, individually vacuum-packed bite-size pieces of bak kwa that eliminate the hassle of getting one's fingers oily when eating, proved to be popular after it was launched in 2002, and accounts for more than 10 per cent of the company's total bak kwa sales.

He says: 'Our products need to change as lifestyles change because our long-time customers are getting old and if we do not entice younger consumers, we will run out of customers.'

===

Feb 7, 2010

Boon Tong Kee

ST PHOTO: RAJ NADARAJAN

Who: Mr Wong Soon Hock, 45, director of operations, Boon Tong Kee

What: The popular chicken rice chain was started in 1979 by Singaporean Thian Boon Hua as a coffee-shop stall in Chinatown

Where: Six outlets here including 401 Balestier Road, tel: 6254-3937, open: 11 to 4am daily, and a store in Taiwan, with another two outlets opening this year, one each in Taiwan and Jakarta

After the avian flu struck in 2004, Mr Wong and his management team found themselves puzzling over the fate of the popular chicken rice restaurant, Boon Tong Kee.

He says in Mandarin: 'We realised that we could not rely just on chicken rice to sustain our business. So we decided to venture into selling the sauces we use at our restaurant, which we produce in a central kitchen in Woodlands.'

The range of sauces, including the dark soya sauce and chilli sauce that are served with its poached chicken, began selling last year at its restaurants and are priced between $3 and $10 a bottle.

Buoyed by the encouraging response, it is adding eight new flavours to the range this year, including ginger paste and black pepper sauce, and it is also looking to distribute the sauces through provision shops.

Its outlets were also revamped in 2005 to improve the brand's image.

Checked table cloths and softer lighting were introduced to create a more comfortable dining experience in the hope of appealing to younger diners.

The area where the cook chops the poached chicken was also enclosed in glass to create a hygienic environment while allowing diners to watch the cook at work.

Mr Wong, who joined the restaurant as a cook in 1985 after his National Service and worked his way up the ranks, says: 'Before our various revamps, our annual sales was about $12 million in 2004. Last year, our sales increased to about $15 million and we have also seen younger customers eat at our restaurants.'

He was picked by the founder to helm the company last year because he successfully turned around the business at its Whampoa West outlet. Business there was lagging due to MRT works and construction at nearby flats, which blocked the eatery from the view of passers-by.

He sustained the outlet with sales of about $1 million annually from 1997 to 2004 by offering customers a 10 per cent discount. And when construction work in the neighbourhood was completed by 2005, sales there doubled to more than $2 million.

Although he did not finish primary school, Mr Wong, who is married with three children aged between seven and 14, attends short business courses to learn management skills.

He also credits Mr Thian as being a wise mentor who taught him the importance of being prepared for all situations.

Looking ahead, he says: 'We plan to bring our chicken rice, as well as our bottled sauces, to overseas markets because we are confident of the international appeal of our product.' 

===

Feb 7, 2010

Muthu's Curry

ST PHOTO: ONG WEE JIN

Who: Mr Visvanaath A., 38, chief executive officer, and Mrs Veshali Visvanaath, 32, director of marketing, Muthu's Curry Restaurant and The Muthu's Flavors

What: Muthu's Curry Restaurant was started in 1969 in a Klang Road coffee-shop stall by Mr Ayyakkannu S., who came here in 1957 and worked as a provision store assistant previously. His son, Mr Visvanaath, took over the business in 1994 and opened a new casual Indian restaurant, The Muthu's Flavors, last December

Where: Muthu's Curry Restaurant in 138 Race Course Road, 01-01, tel: 6392-1722, open: 10.30am to 10.30pm daily, and B1-56 Suntec City Mall, tel: 6835-7707, open: 11.30am to 3pm and 6 to 10pm daily; The Muthu's Flavors in Block 7 Dempsey Road, 01-01, tel: 6474-5128, open: 11.30am to 3pm and 6 to 10.30pm daily and 313 Orchard Road, B3-02 313@Somerset, tel: 6884-8380, open: 11am to 11pm daily

Pappadum twisties, curly ribbons of the Indian cracker, and Masala Coke, a cola drink flavoured with spices such as cumin, are some surprises at The Muthu's Flavors, a hip off-shoot of the famous traditional Indian restaurant Muthu's Curry, which specialises in fish head curry.

Mr Visvanaath says: 'We want to target a younger crowd with The Muthu's Flavors and the feedback from focus groups was that young diners like eating individually plated meals.'

So the couple and his brother, director of operations Srinivasan A., 30, decided to offer a complete meal in individual portions with a serving of salad, rice or naan, the main dish and pappadum twisties presented elegantly on a plate.

The new eatery concept also boasts chic interiors and meals average between $15 and $25.

Response to the two The Muthu's Flavors, which cost about $1.5 million to set up, has been encouraging. Mr Visvanaath adds: 'If my father was still around, I might not have introduced improvements because he believed that if something isn't broken, don't fix it. And when he handed over the business to me, the restaurant was always packed, even though it had little ambience.'

After his father died in 1996 from a heart attack, however, business nosedived because hoarding for the construction of the North-East MRT line obscured its outlet in Little India. But his lucky break came in 2001 when a TV show featured the eatery and queues began forming. Business was so good, he was able to afford a $1.6-million move to its current larger Race Course Road premises in 2004.

The couple, married with three young children, also added North Indian food such as naan to the menu for variety. He says: 'My father might not agree with all the changes I have introduced but I am sure he will be proud of how I have grown the business.

===

Feb 7, 2010

Jack's Place

The founder?s grandsons Alvin Say (left) and Jason Ong run the outlets. -- ST PHOTO: RAJ NADARAJAN

Who: Mr Jason Ong, 32, management services manager, JP Pepperdine group of restaurants including Jack's Place, Seafood Harvest, Eatzi Gourmet and Brewbaker's Kitchen and Bar

What: Mr Say Lip Hai, a Hainanese cook to expatriate families here, started a Western restaurant, Cola Restaurant and Bar in Sembawang in 1966. He bought over the English pub, Jack's Place in Killiney Road in 1967, which was started by an Englishman named Jack Hunt. All the outlets were later named Jack's Place. The family-run business expanded and its restaurants came under the brand JP Pepperdine last year.

Where: 14 Jack's Place outlets here, including 6 Raffles Boulevard, 02-138H, tel: 6338-8292, open: 11am to 10.30pm daily, and one outlet in Malaysia

Top management of the family-run steakhouse chain Jack's Place had initially shelved makeover plans following a bad experience with a branding consultant in 2002.

But Mr Ong, the grandson of the restaurant's founder, was not ready to give up on revamping the chain. After much persuasion, he convinced the second-generation helming the business to overhaul the restaurant's dated look.

In 2003, the design of its eateries was made more uniform and more wood elements were introduced to create a homey feeling.

Mr Ong, who joined after graduating with a bachelor's degree in commerce from Deakin University in Melbourne and who is married with a child, says: 'After the rebranding, which cost us about $1.8 million, we saw sales grow by more than 10 per cent the following year.'

Between 2005 and 2008, the group added new restaurant concepts to its portfolio, including seafood outlet Seafood Harvest in Bugis Junction in 2005, and its halal restaurant, bakery and catering arm, Eatzi Gourmet, in 2006 with outlets in East Point Mall and Safra Yishun Country Club.

In 2008, it opened a riverside grill restaurant Brewbaker's Kitchen and Bar in Anchorvale Community Club.

These restaurants were initially associated with Jack's Place and all bore the tagline 'by Jack's Place'. But the affiliation was dropped last year and a new brand, JP Pepperdine, was created as an umbrella company for the various restaurants.

The reason: diners found it hard to accept the established steakhouse brand branching out into different cuisines.

He says: 'JP stands for Jack's Place, a nod to our heritage, and we added 'Pepperdine' because pepper is a versatile ingredient used in many cuisines and we want the name to reflect the diversity of cuisines our group represents.'

With this new brand in place, the restaurant group, with a turnover of more than $30 million last year, is planning to open other restaurants that might feature non-Western cuisines.

===

Feb 7, 2010

Hock Lam Street Beef Kway Teow

Ms Tina Tan has modernised the outlets after taking over. -- ST PHOTO: AIDAH RAUF

View more photos

Who: Miss Tina Tan, 35, owner, Original Hock Lam Street Beef Kway Teow

What: Founded by Miss Tan's great-grandfather, a hawker from China. The business began in 1911 in Hock Lam Street and it specialises in Teochew-style beef kway teow, which is served with salted vegetables and blue ginger

Where: Three outlets, including 1 Jelebu Road, 01-60 Bukit Panjang Plaza, tel: 6314-1273, open 10am to 10pm daily

Instead of opening in a shophouse, as is characteristic of Original Hock Lam Street Beef Kway Teow's previous outlets, the traditional beef noodle store opened its newest outlet last month in the Bukit Panjang Plaza shopping centre.

The new shop also boasts a more elaborate interior: Its dining area has been made to feel like Hock Lam Street in the early days, where diners would eat on the road between two rows of shophouses. So one wall of the eatery has a mural of a row of shophouses while the opposite one features the remodelled facade of an old colonial building.

This new look will be rolled out at its other stores soon.

She says: 'We felt it was time to introduce a makeover because we want to attract a younger crowd that is more conscious of the dining environment. We eventually went with a refined nostalgic design to appeal to both our long-time customers and younger diners.'

The Bukit Panjang Plaza outlet will also be introducing new food items, such as fried mini mantou with XO minced beef sauce, later this month. These dishes will be added to the menu at its other shops subsequently.

She says: 'Our customers have been asking for a wider range of dishes so I spent a year creating these dishes. We are in the process of fine-tuning the recipes.'

The marketing and media graduate from Murdoch University in Perth quit her personal banker job in 2005 to take over her father's business because she felt strongly about preserving the family's culinary heritage.

The taste of its signature beef kway teow, however, remains unchanged.

The herb-flavoured beef broth is simmered for 24 hours and the beef slices are cut by hand. Miss Tan also prepares the herb mix for the soup stock personally to ensure that the taste of the broth remains consistent at the outlets.

She says: 'We have remained successful for 99 years because our recipe has stayed authentic and we do not plan to stray from this winning recipe.' 

FT: Lunch with the FT - Mdm Fu Ying

Lunch with the FT: Madam Fu Ying

By Lionel Barber

Published: January 29 2010 16:52 | Last updated: January 29 2010 16:52

The elegant 57-year-old gliding towards our table does not fit the stern face of Chinese officialdom. She is wearing a pink checked jacket and skirt; pink and white pearls; and a sunny smile. As other luncheon guests at the Goring Hotel, one of the last family-owned hotels in London, look on, we pose for a photograph. With one enthusiastic eye on posterity, the other on future career prospects, an ambassadorial aide takes two pictures before China’s outgoing ambassador to the UK dismisses him with a mildly embarrassed wave.

Madam Fu Ying is a rare specimen in the ranks of Chinese diplomacy. She is female, she comes from an ethnic minority – she was born in Inner Mongolia – and this week, she takes up a new post in Beijing as only the second female vice-foreign minister since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. (The first was Wang Hairong, Chairman Mao’s niece, who was appointed during the Cultural Revolution.)

We settled on the Goring Hotel, near Victoria, as the location for our lunch after delicate negotiations. The biscuit-brown and cream decor is classic and understated; the menu unequivocally English. The ambassador is delighted. Though she describes the past three years in London as her toughest diplomatic assignment, far more demanding than earlier stints in Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines, she will, she says, miss much: the jogs in the park, the walks down Oxford Street, the West End theatre, the football ...

The football? “Yes, very much,” says the ambassador. “A friend of mine introduced me to Arsenal. He was so keen that I started to support Arsenal. I even have an Arsenal T-shirt, with a number 08.”

EDITOR’S CHOICE

More from Lunch with the FT - Jun-12

As a Spurs supporter, I am underwhelmed but the soft-spoken ambassador presses on regardless. “Last November, Arsenal were playing Chelsea and it was a Sunday. Very cold. I have a blue down coat and I matched it with light blue jeans and a royal blue scarf. Very beautiful. But when I arrived in the stadium I already knew I had made a mistake. It was very awkward cheering for Arsenal [whose shirts are bright red] in bright blue.”

Madam Fu is charming but she also knows that charm can serve as a weapon. As when she was questioned at a 2008 trade conference about the possibility of a British trade boycott because of China’s crackdown in Tibet. Such threats, she replied, could have embarrassing consequences since most of the attendees were wearing clothes made in China: “You’ll all be naked.”

The ambassador claims to have forgotten the incident, and turns to the menu. She selects soused herrings, admitting she has no idea what “soused” means but she is determined to order something authentically British. The waiter recites a word-perfect explanation. Satisfied, she moves on to steamed Cornish sea bass as a main course. I, too, choose sea bass, with a pear and beetroot salad as a starter. The ambassador declines a glass of wine. “Need to stay alert,” she says, conscious perhaps that her superiors in Beijing will study this interview as keenly as any diplomatic dispatch.

Highlights of her three years in London include, says the ambassador, lots of visits to advanced manufacturing sites; trips to the homes of Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters and William Shakespeare; and, less predictably, the British TV talent show The X Factor.

The trickiest point in her tenure came in 2008 with the unrest in Tibet ahead of the Beijing Olympics. A flash of irritation appears on her face as she recalls international pressure for an official boycott of the opening ceremony in Beijing. The very idea of China being “humiliated” – “the last word you would use on China now” – was insulting, not least because it impugns China’s status. She prefers to draw attention to the wave of sympathy for the Chinese people expressed by the British after the devastating earthquake in Sichuan in May 2008. In one month, she notes, the embassy received £2m, including donations from a delegation of 13 policemen who bicycled from Birmingham to London to drop off the cash.

Madam Fu’s command of English is excellent, thanks not only to her background as an interpreter but also to her postgraduate studies at the University of Kent in 1985-86, when she shared a scholarship with another Chinese student. She remembers having to live on £1 a day, after payment of the rent. But however hard life may have been in Canterbury during the Thatcher years, it was nowhere near as tough as her childhood.

Fu Ying was born in 1953 in Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia, an “autonomous region” of China. Her parents were bilingual, speaking Mandarin and Mongolian. Her father wrote poetry. She can, she tells me, still remember the day that a tall, ethnically Chinese man arrived at the family home to take her father away. It was 1967 and the height of the Cultural Revolution, the bloody chaos unleashed by Mao to purge the party and consolidate power.

“The [tall] man looked into my eyes and said, ‘Democracy is great. Do you know what is democracy?’ I shook my head; I didn’t know. And he said, ‘That’s the change of history. You will be swept away by the change of history.’” (Democracy, during the Cultural Revolution, was equivalent to anarchy. No wonder, I muse to myself, it does not carry the same positive connotations in China as in the west.)

A tear appears in Madam Fu’s eye. She recounts how school was shut down and she was taken away, aged 17, to a remote town in the mountains, Wulashan, five hours distant by train. There she worked in the fields – “very, very physical, really stressful and extreme for a young girl” – before helping to build a new factory where she was employed as an announcer, broadcasting information to her co-workers about the weather and the like through a loudspeaker.

But then, in 1973, she had her first break. The Cultural Revolution was in its last throes and previously frowned-upon practices such as examinations to test pupil ability were revived. Fu Ying excelled, having squirrelled away first Russian and then French classics from a library in Wulashan. She also excelled in English, having picked up the basics on Chinese radio. She gained a place to study for four years at Beijing Foreign Studies University.

After the death of Chairman Mao in 1976, China started to open to the rest of the world. Suddenly, interpreters were in heavy demand. Madam Fu joined the elite translation department of the diplomatic service. When I ask her if it is correct that she was a protégée of Mao’s favourite interpreter, she will not confirm it – though she certainly made enough of a mark to be elevated to be interpreter to Deng Xiaoping, Mao’s successor and the man widely credited for introducing market reforms in China.

While the ambassador declines to reveal much about life with Deng, she does confirm a memorable public mistranslation. In January 1988, when the 84-year-old Chinese leader greeted Gro Harlem Brundtland, the then 48-year-old Norwegian premier, on an official visit to China, he observed that she was not so old. Brundtland said that Deng did not look so old either. Deng laughed and said he was only 84 but, explains Fu Ying, “I was in a hurry and said he was 48 ... Deng laughed. But Deng was great. Interpreting for him was really a very exciting experience.”

I ask the ambassador if she was the translator when Deng reportedly declared that he was very pleased with the one-child policy in China because he no longer needed to invade Siberia. “He never said that,” says Madam Fu, showing a momentary sense of humour failure. “He was a very kind man, very alert about the world. I liked Deng; he was very simple, very quick.”

The waiter arrives with our steamed sea bass wrapped in baby spinach. We agree that the fish tastes as good as it looks before I turn to the vexing question of China’s relationship with the rest of the world. How should the west accommodate Chinese power, and why does the scope for mutual misunderstanding seem greater than ever? Madam Fu weighs her answers carefully. “You have your standard [in the west] and you use that standard to measure China, and every time you find China does not fit that standard. But China is never going to, is it? China has such a long history of its own, the only continuous culture in 5,000 years. But it also has about 200 years of a very sad history, with foreign occupations. That hurt China. That’s why the Chinese remember the suffering more than the victories. China has a strong sense of crisis.”

Beyond what I take to be the implied reference to the brutal Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 lies a gut Chinese hostility to being lectured by anyone, whether on human rights, an artificially undervalued currency, the environment or the scramble for raw materials in Africa needed to power the Chinese economy. “There is this frustration about not being understood, not being accepted,” says Madam Fu, who compares different political systems to different types of roof which cannot be imposed willy-nilly on different types of buildings.

The metaphor is seductive but what about universal values, such as freedom of expression, or, more concretely, the controversy over Google, which has just threatened to pull out of China on the grounds that the giant internet group was being both censored and targeted by cyber-hackers? The ambassador seems slightly flustered. “I don’t know the inside story. I don’t know exactly what happened ... I don’t think it’s a clear picture.”

But she soon recovers her poise, noting pointedly that Google apologised last year to Beijing for allowing offensive material on its site (even though the pressure from Beijing that elicited this apology was widely seen in the west as a pretext for renewing state censorship).

As for cyber-attacks, “That is a problem in China and all over the world, so you probably know which country has the best hackers.” The real answer to my Google question comes a few minutes later, and it centres on the Communist party’s determination to maintain its monopoly on information flows and propaganda. As so often with even the most sophisticated Chinese officials, the essence of the argument lies in two words: “political stability”.

“China is in the middle of reform. On the one hand [there is] the importance of maintaining political stability, which is the essential condition for China to grow – and on the other hand, the changing horizon for the government ... I think China is gradually finding the right path and finding the right balance between maintaining political stability while making change, which is one of the most difficult challenges for a government in a developing country. And China is”, she adds, “still a developing country.”

But China is also the coming global power. Does China wish to replace the US as the world’s hegemon? “Deng Xiaoping said China will never be a hegemon. If one day, China becomes one, the world will stand up against China. That is very deep in our hearts. Every diplomat knows that.

“The west should calm down and learn to see China for what it is, not keep speculating and putting their own colour into this painting,” explains Madam Fu, who has a collection of modern Chinese and Mongolian art. “A Chinese painting is watercolour: fresh, very light. If you pour oil on it, you don’t see the painting any more.”

The waiter arrives with Madam Fu’s roly-poly pudding. To show solidarity, I break my informal rule and order a dessert (a poached pear with stem-ginger ice-cream). We have a coffee and tea respectively, and I ask about her next post in Beijing. She treads carefully, noting only that her husband, an anthropologist at the Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, is, as we speak, en route to London to help with the packing. As I prepare to pay the bill, Fu Ying opens her bag and presents me with a small gift: three tiny, out-of-circulation food coupons from Inner Mongolia, once preserved by her mother. The gift at the end of a meal conforms to Chinese etiquette but it also displays a personal and diplomatic touch (she donated a similar gift last October to the British Museum to mark the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic).

Earlier Fu Ying had referred to Britain’s strong sense of justice. Now she says she feels a sense of personal accomplishment as well as a sense of history and her own modest place in it. “I think I will be leaving with a few full-stops, but lots of commas. I opened things, but I haven’t accomplished much, but the passage is open. And there are still a few question-marks which will be answered in future.”

Madam Fu’s language is deliberately opaque. For two-and-a-half hours I have listened to a consummate professional; charming, steely, wary. We started to scratch the surface but there is more to come: how about a rematch in Beijing?

Lionel Barber is editor of the FT

..................................................

The Goring Hotel
Grosvenor Gardens, London SW1

Set lunch x 2 £70
Soused herring
Pear and beetroot leaf salad
Steamed fillet of Cornish sea bass with baby spinach
Jam roly poly with custard
Poached pear with ice-cream

Coffee x 1 £5
Pot of Assam tea x 1 £5
Large still water x 2 £8.50

Total (including service) £99.56

..................................................

Geoff Dyer on China’s charm offensive

Fu Ying with Gordon Brown, 2008

It is possible that other Chinese ambassadors to the UK have written personal letters to the editor of The Sun, but it is almost certainly the case that Fu Ying is the first to do so in defence of talent shows.

“I have to admit that I also enjoy watching The X Factor when there is time and have my favourite contestants,” she wrote in November, following a minor media kerfuffle about noise at her residence from a next-door building that housed the show’s stars. She was coy about who she was rooting for but said many of the wannabe singers had “great qualities”.

For much of the past decade, China has been on a charm offensive, settling border disputes with neighbours, becoming an active player in a host of international organisations and distributing aid in the developing world. The overriding goal has been to play down the idea of a looming “China threat”.

That also means a different style of diplomacy, of which Madam Fu has been one of the most prominent examples. To audiences used to remote, cliché-spouting cadres, her quick wit has been disarming. By writing regular opinion pieces in British newspapers, she has tried to convey the image of a country that is willing to engage in argument and not hide behind defensive slogans.

That has also made her a controversial figure at home. Although China has been working to soften its image, officials overseas face a risk of being denounced for showing weakness in the face of foreign pressure. During the furore over the 2008 riots in Tibet and the Olympic torch relay in London, she came under fire in China for being soft after she wrote an article for The Sunday Telegraph.

Such sniping does not seem to have held her back, given her recent promotion as one of three new vice foreign ministers. Yet she is also returning to Beijing at a time when the mood appears to be shifting and China is not so keen to present a suave demeanour to the world.

There were the bruising talks in Copenhagen over climate change, and the recent threat by Google to leave China after alleged bullying by Beijing and high-tech hacking.

One of Madam Fu’s last acts in London was being summoned by Foreign Office minister Ivan Lewis after the execution of British citizen Akmail Shaikh for smuggling heroin. Beijing responded by highlighting Britain’s role in the 19th-century opium wars. No one seemed to be making jokes about The X-Factor.

Geoff Dyer is the FT’s Beijing bureau chief

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010.

BusinessWeek: In China, Pride Is the Driver

Insight January 4, 2010, 11:51AM EST text size: TT

In China, Pride Is the Driver

Today, pride in China's history is the "driving force" inspiring the Chinese people to develop their nation's industries and economy

By Robert Lawrence Kuhn

Although the goal of nearly every country is economic development, China has an extra impetus to achieve that goes beyond material benefits: Chinese people want to show the world that they are in every way a modern nation and in every sense a great power. If this requires material wealth, technological prowess, military strength, a world-class aerospace program, then these are what they must and will achieve. For example, in every industry of importance, China's leaders expect its corporations to become among the world's largest and most successful. Chinese people are not reticent to boast that the stock market capitalizations of their corporations in energy, telecommunications, and banking are among the largest in the world.

The roots of this pride go deep, to the visceral feelings of a people whose civilization led the world for centuries only to be humiliated and oppressed by foreign invaders and then stymied and scourged by domestic tyrants. Pride in China's history "is the historical driving force inspiring people today to build the nation," says Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping, who is odds-on favorite to become China's next president. "Our commitment and determination is rooted in our historic and national pride," he adds. "China's development, at least in part, is driven by patriotism and pride."

Politburo member Li Yuanchao, a rising star in Chinese politics, emphasizes China's national spirit. "Although the Chinese people are not as wealthy as Westerners, and China lags behind developed countries in many areas such as technology, social systems, and environmental protection," Li says, "the Chinese people as a whole are very positive about their country's development and have confidence in their future. We have a sense of adventure and pride and we are ambitious to build our society."

Guiding Principle

My first lesson in how deep such pride runs came in 1992. After the tragic events of June 4, 1989, I had determined not to return to China. About 15 months later, however, appeals for support from reform-minded friends led me to change my mind, and I traveled to Beijing, where I came to know a quick-witted professor with a penchant for criticizing authority. I couldn't recall his ever having said anything nice about China's political system—and so, one fine day on a remote hilltop outside the city, I felt secure in applauding the American action in favoring Sydney over Beijing as host city for the 2000 Olympics. This, I said, was how the U.S. government intended to punish the Chinese government for its armed response in Tiananmen Square.

He and I were alone, and I was fully expecting his hearty support of America's blackball. His response left me speechless. "You stupid Americans," he scolded me sharply. "You insult China and you offend me!" He continued, unsmiling, glaring at me as though I myself had cast the blackballing vote. "How stupid of your country and how insulting to mine!"

It was a verbal stinging I shall not forget, and a searing tutorial of what really counts in China. Don't allow the internal disputes to cloud your vision. Don't assume that derogations of the government, or of communist ideology, indicate a diminished patriotism. The pride of the Chinese people—pride in their country, heritage, history; pride in their economic power, personal freedoms, and international importance; and, yes, pride in their growing military strength—is a fundamental characteristic that one encounters over and over and over again. As I see it, pride is the primary guiding principle that energizes a great deal of what is happening in China today.

Recent History

Chinese pride invites itself into diverse policy debates. Consider China's space program (especially the Shenzhou manned spacecraft and lunar missions), an apparent luxury in a country still grappling with widespread poverty but enthusiastically supported by an overwhelming majority of the people. Why? Pride. President Hu Jintao attends ceremonies for each of China's manned space flights.

This quest for pride is woven into the fabric of much of China's modern history. In the West, for example, the Korean War is remembered as a wretched, miserable conflict, which epitomized the bleak years of the Cold War. For many in China, however, the same conflict is viewed as a crucible of national resuscitation and revival. After three years of hurling wave after wave of human sacrifices, China managed to end the war in a stalemate. It was an exceptional achievement. The U.S., the greatest military power in the world, which less than 10 years earlier had vanquished Germany and Japan, was battled to a draw. Grit and determination, in the Chinese view, thwarted superior military technology.

That "victory" came at a tremendous cost: As many as 1 million Chinese died, including Mao Zedong's own son. However, for many Chinese citizens, the war was all about national sovereignty and national pride. The agreement ending the Korean War was the first in more than a century that was not "unequal." Though Sino-American relations had hit an all-time low, China had stood up.

Such pride was in evidence again 45 years later, as China celebrated the end of British rule in Hong Kong, and the colony's return to Chinese sovereignty. As the Chinese flag reached the top of the flagpole eight seconds after midnight on July 1, 1997, celebrations broke out across China as crowds screamed, jumped, and danced, waving Chinese and Hong Kong flags. Colonial humiliation of 155 years had come to an end.

Technology Development

In 2006, Hong Kong's stock market surpassed New York's as the world's second most active board (after London) in floating initial public offerings. The largest new stock listings were companies from China. If the stock exchange in Hong Kong, with its legions of investment bankers in elegant tailored suits, seems from a different planet than the killing fields of Korea, with its legions of exhausted soldiers wearing filthy military fatigues, they draw together under the rubric of Chinese pride.

In 1964, the mushroom cloud rising into the desert sky in northwest China startled the world, revealing the rapid progress of China's nuclear technology and affirming the country's determination to safeguard its sovereignty and independence. China's pride in its nuclear achievements, like the pride in its aerospace enterprises, made American accusations of Chinese nuclear spying, particularly in 1999, all the more galling. The underlying affront was not so much the spying charge itself but the implication that China was incapable of developing advanced technology on its own. To the Chinese, an independent nuclear and aerospace capability makes the unambiguous assertion that China will never again be humiliated by foreigners, that China will control its own destiny, and that if there is to be peace in the world, an independent China must help guarantee it.

China did of course eventually win the right to stage the Olympics. The 2008 Beijing Olympics opened in spectacular fashion; with dramatic displays of breathtaking pyrotechnics and elaborate traditional performances, China showcased for the world its vision and its artistry, rooted in its 5,000-year civilization and symbolizing its contemporary reemergence. The opening ceremony was commanded by acclaimed film director Zhang Yimou, who on Oct. 1 last year directed China's 60th anniversary extravaganza of song, dance, and fireworks. Critics accused Zhang, once a renegade artist, of selling out by supporting the Chinese government. Others said it was not Zhang who had changed, but China itself, with reform and opening up to the outside world having transformed the country. To Zhang and most other Chinese, the Olympics and the 60th anniversary celebrations were all about patriotism and pride—pride in Chinese civilization and artistry, pride in the Chinese people, pride in China.

Dr. Kuhn, an international investment banker and corporate strategist, is a longtime adviser to the Chinese government. He is the author of How China's Leaders Think: The Inside Story of China's Reform and What This Means for the Future (new from John Wiley), which features exclusive conversations with China's senior political leaders, current and future, and with leaders in diverse areas of Chinese society.

©2010 Bloomberg L.P. All Rights Reserved.

ST: Time to count our blessings

Home > Review > Others

Dec 30, 2009

THINK-TANK

Time to count our blessings

By Kishore Mahbubani

DECEMBER is a great month to be in Singapore. The northeast monsoon passes through. It rains regularly. Temperatures fall. Cool breezes flow. Parents leave town with their kids. Traffic jams diminish. All this provides a great setting to sit back and reflect on the year. Once again, Singapore has many blessings to count.

2009 may provide a new record for economic forecasts. When the year began, the Singapore economy was forecasted to shrink by up to 8 per cent. As the year ends, it appears the real figure will be close to -2 per cent. A 6 percentage point improvement in economic prospects is among the greatest improvements Singapore has experienced within one year.

The developed economies, Singapore's natural peer group now, continue to suffer high unemployment. The United States hit a high of 10.2 per cent, Britain 7.9 per cent, France 8.3 per cent and Ireland 12.5 per cent.

The story of Ireland is a particularly telling one for Singapore. Until 2007, it was assumed it was destined to perform like an Asian tiger economy. Instead it has suffered a spectacular economic meltdown with its gross domestic product shrinking by 13.6 per cent from its peak. Property prices have gone down by 18 per cent.

At the beginning of the year, it looked as though Singapore could have gone the way of Ireland. Property prices were heading south. Unemployment began to rise. Yet the combination of prudent savings over the years, a series of well-timed and well-thought-through domestic measures, and effective stimulus packages in China, India and Indonesia, helped Singapore to avoid the worst-case scenario. By the end of the year, Singapore's unemployment rate was much lower than that of any other country in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

This is the second time that Singapore has sailed through a major economic storm and emerged relatively unscathed. The first time, of course, was the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-98. This remarkable performance confirms that in the area of governance, Singapore has achieved something that deserves mention in the Guinness Book of World Records.

The Great Recession of 2008-09 has also signalled the end of the Reagan-Thatcher revolution, which emphasised the importance of the invisible hand over the visible hand, and a return to the old-fashioned balance between the visible hand of good governance and the invisible hand of free markets. Few countries can match Singapore's record in maintaining just that balance. This is a blessing we cannot take for granted as it takes exceptional performance to achieve the right balance.

Another blessing we have is the confirmation that we are located at exactly the right place at the right point in history. With the era of the Western domination of world history coming to an end - an end that has been accelerated by this crisis - and the return of Asia, it seems clear that Asean will play an increasingly important role in managing the great geopolitical shifts under way in our region. I remain amazed that many thoughtful observers of geopolitics are often amazed when I speak of the centrality of Asean. Let me provide one simple piece of empirical proof.

There is only one regional organisation in the world that has signed free trade agreements (FTAs) with all the major and middle economies of the Asia-Pacific region. And guess what? Many of these FTAs will come into force in the next year or two: Asean-China, Asean-India, Asean-South Korea, and Asean-Australia next year, and Asean-Japan in 2012. If these FTAs fulfil even half of what they have promised, Singapore will be surrounded by an immense amount of trade creation swirling around its region. This is why it has been strategically wise for Singapore to continually strive to strengthen Asean in all its dimensions. We must never take our blessings for granted.

A third blessing Singapore has is that the return of China and India as two of the world's leading economies will happen sooner rather than later. When boulders begin to roll down the mountain and begin to gain momentum, they become unstoppable, even if they encounter many bumps as they roll down. Indeed, the Great Recession should have been a major bump for the Chinese and Indian economies. Instead, under the worst possible global economic circumstances, China's economy grew by an estimated 8 per cent and India by 6 per cent. It is hard to provide more vivid proof of boulders gaining momentum.

Clearly, companies around the world will want to engage both China and India. To engage China alone, Hong Kong might provide the best entry point. To engage India alone, Dubai may be sufficient (although its prospects look somewhat dubious now). However, to engage both China and India simultaneously, the best city to locate oneself in is clearly Singapore. It is within six hours' flying distance of most major Chinese and Indian cities. And equally importantly, Singapore enjoys cultural comfort with both societies. In short, the centre of world history is rolling down to our doorstep. What bigger blessing can one ask for?

However, having lived for over 60 years and experienced many ups and downs in my life, I have come to realise that after every shower of blessings, there inevitably comes a downturn, perhaps even a tragedy or two. This pattern of ups and downs is a persistent feature of life. Hence, even while we enjoy our current shower of blessings, we should be psychologically prepared for the next downturn. And we could experience severe problems, or even a tragedy or two, even if we did all the right things. No one has yet found the secret formula to avoid disruptions and tragedies altogether. Singapore is no exception.

The writer is the dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. Think-Tank is a weekly column rotated among eight leading figures in Singapore's tertiary and research institutions

NY Times: Pancakes, Prosperity, Peace

January 5, 2010

Op-Ed Columnist

Pancakes, Prosperity, Peace

By ROGER COHEN

HOI AN, VIETNAM — After the war and failed flight overseas, after her father’s persecution and the knowledge of hunger, it was the miracle of the crispy pancake that changed things for Trinh Diem Vy.

That pancakes save lives is not sufficiently known. That Vy’s family pancake — a savory rice-flour creation turned a warm yellow by turmeric and stuffed with shrimp, pork, bean sprouts, star fruit, mixed herbs, green banana — can reconcile a war-ravaged nation like Vietnam is a truth this woman has lived.

Hurt still inhabits her eyes. Vy’s father worked with U.S. forces during the war. When America lost, retribution came for him in the form of Communist “re-education.” Unable to put food on the table, he would bang his head against the wall in frustration. Attempts to flee in 1975 and 1978 failed.

“The second time we got as far as a fishing village and there was this woman with blackened teeth, spooky-looking,” Vy tells me. “She offered us clams in a broth with sweet potatoes, and I did not want to eat it but my mother made me. And the comfort of it spread through me. I guess I learned early that when I feel a deep stress, the only place that brings me back is the kitchen.”

It was a quiet morning in Hoi An on the central Vietnamese coast, a scent of lemon basil in the air. Old folk were dusting porches with brooms of bound thatch.

Just up the coast, at Da Nang, the first American marines landed in 1965, and the war soon escalated. Vy smiles at me: “During the hunger, I understood that food was life. Now I look at all the fresh ingredients and it brings back my energy.”

I’m a big believer in the stress-dissipating, difference-bridging kitchen. Nothing dissolves angst as fast as culinary creation. I look forward to the first Israeli-Palestinian food festival and the inaugural Indian-Pakistani gastronomic fair. Visceral enemies betray themselves in the similarity of their foods. We know from the Bible how blood brothers slay each other.

Vy, now 40, saw all the killing as a child. She knows the millions of dead beneath the shimmering green of the rice paddies. She saw how the collectivization of the Communist victors could keep rice from tables. Survival, she understood, comes first; then comes the rest.

The rest began with that crisp pancake, the signature dish of the tiny restaurant her family opened in 1980. From the first, it was about balance of taste and texture. For Vy, there are five essential elements of taste — sweet, sour, hot, bitter and salty. But they demand the five elements of texture: crispy, crunchy, chewy, soft and silky. In their marriage lies the harmony that reconciles.

Locals came. They chewed and talked. So did occasional visitors. The yin-yang pancake was deemed good. Former foes agreed on that.

Vy liked the feel in her hands of the mangos blotchy from the sun, the coarse-skinned pomelos, the turmeric root gnarled as ginger, the crinkly rice paper and crisp-stemmed morning glory. She mused on her future — and took a practical romantic step.

He was from the North, of “clean background,” and so he opened party-controlled doors. “My husband gave me space, I was able to do things,” she says. Was it a loveless marriage? “Let’s say we are modern friends.”

So it was that the daughter of a man who fought with the Americans married into a family that fought against the United States: of such compromises has Vietnam’s fast-growing prosperity been built. And so it was that Vy got authorization to open her own restaurant, “Mermaid,” in 1990, about the time that the Communists were deciding socialism was really whatever made the people happy.

Vy now has four restaurants. She’s a successful entrepreneur in a country where communism is capitalism. She dreams of the quiet life but “is riding the tiger” for now.

That takes balance, which is what her food is about. She explains texture. A pear or bean sprout is crunchy. Deep-fried is crispy. Chewy is, well, Vietnamese meat. Good rice is soft and silky. American food, by contrast, tends toward uniformity of texture and instant, illusory satisfaction.

Vietnam induces wonder. All the French blood, American blood, Vietnamese blood, the decades of war, has been conjured away. Nations where women are succeeding and compromise is prized are capable of that. Vy has balanced out the past. Women do that a lot better than men.

She worries about the speed of development now, tells me “we are selling the young rice” (a Vietnamese metaphor for being impatient), losing the life of the spirit to globalized material things. Prospective daughters-in-law need no longer prove their worth by preparing a good “pho” — the national broth. “People want shortcuts, but in cooking there are no short cuts,” she says.

With that Vy offers me a wonderful banh mi op la, that marriage of the French baguette, eggs, chili, fresh herbs and spices that in itself seems almost worth a colonial war. The banh mi is an act of balance like Vy’s inspiring life.

Copyright 2010

Economist: Chinese history textbooks - The frugality of truth

Chinese history textbooks

The fragility of truth

Oct 8th 2009 | BEIJING
From The Economist print edition

History just ain’t what it used to be

Illustration by Claudio Munoz

SCHOOL textbooks in China have a habit of bending the truth, to suit Communist Party dogma or to reinforce moral messages. Rarely does anyone challenge them. Exams require rote learning, and children are not encouraged to question received wisdom. A group of 20 or so teachers from across China, however, has recently caused a stir by pointing out some mistakes.

Their efforts, widely reported in the official press, have steered clear of politically sensitive issues such as the party’s own record. Indeed the errors they have focused on sound little more than nitpicks. They question, for example, a commonly told tale (not just in China), that Thomas Edison, who was later to invent the light bulb, supposedly helped a doctor illuminate an operation performed on his mother by manipulating candles and mirrors.

In Chinese schools, however, the dividing line between historical fiction and history can easily be confused. Children are often not taught to make a distinction. As a result, students lose the ability to look for and identify mistakes, says Leng Yubin, one of the teachers campaigning for a textbook purge. The press has quoted comparisons of these errors to the adulteration of milk with toxic melamine, which poisoned tens of thousands of infants last year.

China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, perhaps unwittingly stirred the debate last month when he visited a Beijing high school. After sitting at the back of a class, he pointed out a mistake. A textbook described the provinces of Shaanxi and Gansu as in north China, whereas they are officially in north-western China. Why, asked one widely circulated commentary, did it take the prime minister to point out such an error? The publishing house reportedly retorted that geographically speaking, north China is correct.

Such brushes with orthodoxy are unlikely to make much headway. Occasional reports have surfaced in the official press in recent years that Mao Zedong did not, contrary to widespread belief, declare on October 1st 1949 in Tiananmen Square that the Chinese people had “stood up”. (He said something like it at a less dramatic ceremony a few days earlier.) But during recent 60th anniversary celebrations of communist China’s founding, several reports in state controlled newspapers revived the old myth.

Another dubious assertion is being visibly perpetuated. The authorities have said that 56 columns erected on Tiananmen Square for the celebrations will stay put. They represent China’s officially recognised 56 “ethnic groups”. It is a number that few Chinese schoolchildren would dare to challenge. Yet when the communists came to power there were found to be more than 400. Officials eventually settled on the much lower figure and suppressed further debate.

Copyright © 2009 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

ST: Rajaratnam, keeper of the faith

Sep 20, 2009

Rajaratnam, keeper of the faith

The Pledge is the enduring legacy of the late minister, to whom Singapore was worth fighting and dying for

By Irene Ng

Mr Rajaratnam understood the power of language and of ideas. And the idea he loved most was: A Singaporean Singapore where its citizens transcend their boundaries of race, religion and language, and unite to become one people. -- ST FILE PHOTO As any writer knows, first drafts are subject to revision. Good writers hone, sculpt and polish their drafts to make sure that their final versions sparkle. Mr S. Rajaratnam, who drafted Singapore's national Pledge, was a very good writer. Before he joined politics in 1959, he had distinguished himself as an influential newspaper columnist and a short-story writer. He understood the power of language and of ideas. And the idea he loved most was: A Singaporean Singapore where its citizens transcend their boundaries of race, religion and language, and unite to become one people. The Pledge and its origins have been much discussed recently. The subject is of particular interest to me as I am writing Mr Rajaratnam's biography for the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. In the course of my research over the last five years, I have gained a deeper appreciation of how the Pledge came about and why it stands as Mr Rajaratnam's enduring legacy to Singapore. Before the then Foreign Minister put his mind to the wording of the Pledge in 1966, the initial idea, as envisaged by the then Education Minister Ong Pang Boon, was that the Pledge would be recited by students in classrooms and during flag-raising ceremonies. The original idea arose, in fact, as a sort of administrative compromise, given the constraints of schools. It can be traced back to October 1965, shortly after Singapore's separation from Malaysia. The Education Ministry wanted to inculcate national consciousness and patriotism among students in schools by assembling them for a flag-raising ceremony to the strains of the National Anthem. However, the mass singing of the anthem, to be accompanied by a brass band, required a large field or assembly hall. Many schools lacked such facilities. Even those with the facilities could not carry out the flag-raising ceremony daily because of the tight curriculum. In a letter dated Oct 20, 1965, Mr Willie Cheng, the Ministry of Education's principal assistant secretary (administration), proposed that the flag-raising ceremonies be carried out in the classroom instead, where students would salute the flag. In a response dated Oct 22, 1965, Mr Kwan Sai Kheong, acting permanent secretary and director of education, wrote that Mr Ong had suggested, as a compromise, a pledge of two to three lines to be recited in the classroom, in place of singing the national anthem. On that basis, two earlier versions of the Pledge were produced. The first, dated Dec 17, 1965, was by Mr Philip Liau, adviser on textbooks and syllabuses. He used the American Students' Pledge as a reference: 'I pledge (reaffirm) my allegiance (loyalty) to the Flag of Singapore, and to the country for which it stands; one sovereign nation of many freedom-loving people of one heart, one mind and one spirit, dedicated to a just and equal society.' The second version, dated Dec 30, 1965, by Mr George Thomson, director of the Political Study Centre, read: 'I proudly and wholeheartedly pledge my loyalty to our flag of Singapore and to the honour and independence of our Republic whose banner it is. We come from different races, religions and cultures, but we are now united in mind and heart as one nation, and one people, dedicated to build by democratic means a more just and equal society.' Both versions were submitted to Mr Ong on Jan 26, 1966. His senior staff preferred the first version, considering it shorter and less abstract. It was no surprise that Mr Ong then turned to Mr Rajaratnam, a master stylist known for his strong convictions on building a common national identity. In a letter to Mr Rajaratnam dated Feb 2, 1966, Mr Ong asked him for comments on the two versions and for 'whatever amendments you wish to suggest'. By the time Mr Rajaratnam reverted with his earliest draft dated Feb 18, 1966, the Pledge was completely transformed. While the first two versions were all about pledging loyalty to the flag and country, Mr Rajaratnam's was about pledging to shared ideals, to a vision of Singapore that was, to his mind, worth fighting and dying for. And while the first two versions used the personal pronoun 'I', Mr Rajaratnam opted for the collective 'We, as citizens of Singapore'. Defying the evidence before his eyes, he imagined a nation pulsating as one people. Only he would have the boldness to envision a people giving voice to such ideals in unison, declaring their identity as 'citizens of Singapore', as opposed to 'the Malays', 'the Chinese', 'the Indians' and so on. More profoundly, he changed the entire premise for the Pledge as originally conceived by the Education Ministry. It was not just a few lines to be recited to the flag. It was a promise made to oneself, to each other and to future generations. Mr Rajaratnam's earliest draft which we have on record went: 'We, as citizens of Singapore, pledge to forget differences of race, language and religion and become one united people; to build a democratic society where justice and equality will prevail, and where we will seek happiness and progress by helping one another.' When he wrote 'to forget differences of race, language and religion', it was not a call for collective amnesia. He was not enjoining the people to deny their differences. He was calling on them to disregard these differences in their quest for a Singaporean Singapore. As his speeches during that period show, he was not blind to the fact that these differences were deeply rooted. On the contrary, he was all too conscious of their potency after the trauma of the racial riots in 1964 and the Separation in 1965. He was subjected to repeated reminders of the emotive power of appeals to these differences. During the years of merger, he was the strongest advocate for a Malaysian Malaysia, as opposed to a Malay Malaysia. Indeed, it was he who coined the slogan 'Malaysian Malaysia'. What he did not foresee was that Singapore would be expelled. The Separation in 1965 was, as he put it, 'the crushing of my dreams'. 'I believed in one nation, regardless of race and religion. My dreams were shattered,' he said. In the wake of that agonising moment came another test. Shortly after the Separation, a group of Chinese chauvinists, aware that their community now constituted 75 per cent, wanted Chinese language and culture to be the dominant consideration in government policy. Mr Rajaratnam recounted: 'They charged the PAP government with betraying Chinese language and culture. They believed that, in a predominantly Chinese Singapore, where the Chinese had overwhelming strength, the Government could be panicked into opting for Chinese chauvinism.' The minorities, particularly the Malays, were fearful of what Singapore would be like. When Mr Rajaratnam wrote his first draft of the Pledge, asking people to 'forget their differences', it was in the context of such anxious times. Disregard these differences of race, language and religion; do not let them stand in the way of becoming a united people, to the dream of creating a Singaporean Singapore, where justice and equality will prevail. Help one another to seek happiness and progress. Do this regardless of race, language or religion, we are implicitly urged. This ideal permeates many of his speeches on the topic at the time. Indeed, he was the first minister to use the phrase 'unity in diversity' in the 1960s, enjoining people to come together while celebrating the diversity among them. From available records, we can ascertain that the Pledge - as is used today - was finalised in July 1966. There is unfortunately a gap in the historical records on the revisions between Mr Rajaratnam's first draft, dated Feb 18, 1966, and the final one. But knowing how he worked and liked to work, in his days as a journalist as well as a politician, he would have refined it along the way, taking into account various views. As part of this process, he consulted the then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. According to Mr Lee's recollection, as related in an interview with me, he had pointed out to Mr Rajaratnam that some words sounded too idealistic. Mr Lee also tightened the draft. Unlike the Singapore flag which was discussed in the Cabinet in 1959, there is no record of any discussion in Cabinet on the Pledge. A search of the Cabinet minutes of meetings and papers in 1965 and 1966 revealed nothing on it. From this and available records, one can conclude that the final version was firmed up between individual ministers with input from Ministry of Education officials. There is no doubt in my mind, however, that the final words, spirit and sentiments of the Pledge owed much to Mr Rajaratnam. Mr Lee rightly described him as 'a great idealist'. He was also a great visionary. Without such qualities, the Pledge would not have been the imaginative leap that it was. He had great faith in the power of the human will to overcome the differences of race, language, and religion, and to transform the separate communities into a nation. After Mr Rajaratnam left the Cabinet in 1988, he became concerned with policies which appeared to encourage Singaporeans to assert their communal identities. In 1990, he spoke up against what he perceived as a dangerous form of Chinese self-assertion in the Speak Mandarin campaign. While making clear that he supported the campaign just as he would for others encouraging people to speak 'Malay, Tamil, French, Japanese, or even better English', he took issue with the campaign's slogan 'if you are Chinese, make a statement - in Mandarin'. This, for the nervous minorities, would carry the subliminal message that the Chinese are different, he warned. Had he been asked, he would have suggested this slogan instead: 'Make a Singaporean statement in Mandarin.' Such episodes underscored the importance of Mr Rajaratnam's role as the keeper of the faith, a role which few others could play with equal conviction. He became an institution as a protector of the vision in the national Pledge - his enduring legacy to Singapore. The writer is a Member of Parliament and writer-in-residence at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (Iseas). The first volume of Mr S. Rajaratnam's two-part biography will be published by Iseas by early next year.

Copyright © 2007 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved. Privacy Statement & Condition of Access

ST: Present about the past - Singapore

Present about the past

Sep 19, 2009

Curator Lim Chen Sian (left) used reverse chronology to display the maps and artefacts, some of which came from collector Lim Shao Bin (right). -- ST PHOTOS: SAMUEL HE Spy maps and artefacts of secret meetings and espionage chart aspects of Singapore's history

By deepika shetty

An exhibition now on at the National Library Building charts some little-known aspects of Singapore's history, including Japanese spy plans for invading Singapore as early as 1910. The show, Vignettes In Time: Singapore Maps And History Through The Centuries, has over 130 maps and artefacts, including the very first image of Singapore, consisting of sketches done in 1819. The sketches have never been seen in public before. The display captures the Singapore story, where people can look up the location of long-gone kampungs and school sites, for example, and marvel at modern Singapore as an urban wonder. It also represents a personal journey for Mr Lim Shao Bin, 52, a private collector who contributed to the exhibition. Mr Lim, who is a director of computer information systems at a multinational firm, provided about 60 maps and artefacts that give rare insights into Japanese espionage activities well before World War II, including reports of clandestine meetings and a spy chief's diary. They are displayed with maps from the collection of the National Library, which jointly organised the exhibition with the Singapore Heritage Society. Mr Lim started his collection as a way to understand his own past. He says: 'My grandfather was killed by Japanese soldiers in 1945. In 1980, I went to Japan on a scholarship. There were many questions troubling me: When exactly did the war start and why did it start? Could it have been avoided? 'I was searching for answers to some painful questions.' This journey led him to Kanda, a street in Tokyo known for its rich historical material. It was there that he started his collection of Japanese publications, maps and photographs relating to Singapore and Asia, starting from the Meiji period in the 1860s. Over the past 29 years since his visit to Kanda, his collection has grown to more than 1,000 artefacts, including photos, maps and books. He says: 'To understand the present, we have to look into the past.' One aspect of the exhibition that will strike visitors today is how the maps show that since independence, Singapore has increased its physical land mass by 25 per cent. In 1965, the island measured about 600 sq km. It is now 770 sq km. Visitors will discover that the creation of land from the sea or swamps can be traced back to 1822 when Sir Stamford Raffles removed a small hillock near the mouth of Singapore River to fill in the swamp land that is today named Raffles Square. The colonial government later expanded the waterfront districts of the Esplanade, Telok Ayer and Tanjong Pagar. The post-Independence period saw reclamation efforts proceed at a fast pace and this can be seen by how maps show ever-expanding boundaries. Another interesting aspect of the exhibition is that curator Lim Chen Sian uses reverse chronology to display the maps. He starts the exhibition with the growth of modern Singapore from 1965 to the present, before stepping back in time to track the post-war aftermath from 1945 to 1965, and before that, the rise and fall of what he calls 'a gilded age' from 1900 to 1945, and then goes back to Singapore's earlier origins from 1819 to 1900. He says: 'I wanted people to be comfortable with what they know now. Once you have got them in the comfort zone, it is easier to pull them back into the past. 'By the time you get to the end of this exhibition, you realise that Singapore first figured on maritime charts as early as the 17th century.' Mr Lim, 34, who is a trained archaeologist, says if visitors start searching for their old schools and old neighbourhoods in these maps, the exhibition would have served its purpose. He says: 'This was our world before Google maps. Creating a map took so much effort. It told so many stories. I hope when people walk out of here, they will be thinking of some of those stories.' deepikas@sph.com.sg view it VIGNETTES IN TIME: SINGAPORE MAPS AND HISTORY THROUGH THE CENTURIES Where: Exhibition area, Level 10, National Library Building When: Till Nov 18, 10am to 9pm (closed on public holidays) Admission: Free Info: Go to www.nl.sg or call 6332-3255 PUBLIC TOURS English: Today, Sept 26 and Oct 31, 3 to 4pm Chinese: Oct 3 and Oct 24, 3 to 4pm SCHOOL TOURS (in English only) Every Tues, 10.30 to 11.30am, Every Thurs, 3 to 4pm (no tours on public holidays) To book, call 6333-7995 or register online at http://golibrary.nlb.gov.sg. Tours are free, but you need to register as numbers are limited. Japanese maps and photographs plot the future A deceptively simple-looking, no-frills book with a plain beige cover, together with this map, was actually a pocket-size pictorial guide for invading Japanese troops. The map indicates 83 buildings marked in red, which were targets. They included the Singapore General Hospital, the Singapore Civil Airport, the Special Branch Headquarters, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, the Singapore Swimming Club and the Raffles Museum. Geological map of Singapore This tracks the growth of modern Singapore from 1965 to the present. For an island of its size, its geological constitution is surprisingly complex. Almost 50 per cent of the island is granite rock, shown in the area shaded red. The yellow areas indicate a high alluvium content. Alluvium comprises materials such as fine particles of silt and clay and larger particles of sand and gravel, showing reclaimed land. The earliest images of Singapore, 1819 Shown for the first time in public are two sketches of Singapore dated February and April 1819. These are believed to predate all previously known images of Singapore.

Copyright © 2007 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved. Privacy Statement & Condition of Access

ST: Past in posters

Past in posters

Excerpt: The show, Coping With Vulnerability: The First 50 Years. Posters From Our Past, will be a merry trip down memory lane for many, but in its own graphic way charts five decades of self-governance and the changes in society along the way. COPING WITH VULNERABILITY: THE FIRST 50 YEARS. POSTERS FROM OUR PAST Where: Basement 1, National Library Building, 100 Victoria Street When: Till Oct 15, 10am to 9pm daily (closed on public holidays) Info: www.mysingapore.sg === Sep 12, 2009

The nation's growth through 50 years of public education posters is on show at the National Library

By deepika shetty

Singapore's story has been told in books, films, photographs and maps. Get set for a new way of framing its history: through posters. If you Stopped At Two, or actually did cut your long hair, or still think of a camel when you save water, it is due to the influence of public education posters over the years. Now, these posters with their quaint pictures and earnest messages are, for the first time, the subject of a free exhibition that opened last week at the National Library Building. The show, Coping With Vulnerability: The First 50 Years. Posters From Our Past, will be a merry trip down memory lane for many, but in its own graphic way charts five decades of self-governance and the changes in society along the way. About 300 posters produced by the Government and its agencies make up the show, organised by the National Resilience Division of the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts and the National Archives of Singapore. A 'poster boy' for the impact the posters had on society is musician Jatt Ali, 53. The Long Hair poster with the tag line: Males With Long Hair Will Be Attended To Last, has some hair-raising memories for him. The authorities at that time associated people with long hair with hippies and drug addicts. Jatt tells Life!: 'This is from the 1970s. I had long hair and each time I went to the post office, I was served last. People took these posters seriously. 'Once I was even picked up during a police ambush in the Peninsula Plaza area and ended up missing the show I was meant to perform at. Together with 20 other long-haired boys my age, I was locked up for 12 hours. My parents made a lot of noise after that and kept asking me to cut my hair, but I never did it.' Arts impresario Robert Liew, 60, too, recalls the poster. He says: 'We equated long hair with individualism. The Government equated it with undesirable Western influence, primarily drug consumption. 'There was a fair amount of consternation, but before things came to head, no pun intended, it was all over, the drug threat abated and the length of one's hair returned to the domain of fashion.' Sociologist Paulin Tay Straughan, 46, points out that beyond the obvious and in-your-face messages, these posters tell an important story. 'My mother was a nurse in the Family Planning Department and I pretty much grew up with the Stop At Two message. Things were so much simpler then. The fact that we have to use fancy effects, new media and phrase our messages cleverly now shows how far we have advanced as a nation.' History lesson She adds: 'I know some of these posters seem like a real blast from the past and are extremely amusing. But they also show how Singaporeans did not question as much in the early days. Having survived the war, all people wanted was stability. They had full faith in their lawmakers and there was no cynicism.' The trials and tribulations of the early days Dr Straughan refers to is something the exhibition organisers want viewers to reflect on. Supplementing the posters are news clippings, archival photographs and illustrations. The exhibition is divided into four sections with an introduction showcasing how different countries and governments employ posters as a simple and effective means of communication. From there, its three sections touch on issues of Water, Public Health and Internal/ External Threats. Collectively, these posters explore the many challenges Singapore has faced over the years, from communism to communalism, the lack of water resources, exposure to infectious diseases and transnational terrorism post 9/11. Dr K. Unnikrishna Menon, 59, director of the ministry's National Resilience Division, calls the exhibition a 'logical progression'. Two years ago, the ministry organised an exhibition on Infectious Diseases, Past, Present And Future to educate Singaporeans on the threat of pandemics such as Sars and avian flu. Before that was another exhibition, The Changing Faces Of Terrorism. Dr Menon says of the latest show: 'The idea is to get people to pause and reflect and ponder on the eventful journey of 50 years, and the amazing advances we have made. So many Singaporeans take these for granted. 'The posters serve as visual records of our culture and evolution.' Artist and curator Alan Oei, 33, who is working on a project based on posters in the 1970s, says the show reflects a significant part of Singapore's history. He says: 'Sometimes you wonder why Singaporeans expect the Government to do everything for them, and here you have the answer - because we have always been told what to do and what values to aspire to. 'I grew up with lots of posters, which were more campaigns than simple messages. There are still plenty of campaigns, but the messages have become a lot more sophisticated and subtle. The in-your-face kind of approach is gone.' deepikas@sph.com.sg

=== 1970S CONCERNS MALES WITH LONG HAIR WILL BE ATTENDED TO LAST Iconic. It bluntly spells out the official stand on long hair. Men with long hair would be served last. You can laugh about it now, but things were dead serious then. Apart from being served last, male artists with long hair were not allowed to appear on television. TWO IS ENOUGH In 1966, the National Family Planning Campaign was launched and the Government embarked on a Stop-At-Two policy with the slogan: Girl Or Boy - Two Is Enough. The Government feared that unchecked population growth could strain the country's limited resources. At the same time, Singaporeans preferred boys. This Two-Girl poster, as it was called, was meant to highlight that two children, of either sex, were enough. WATER ISSUES SAVE WATER (undated) A camel grins and bears the message of water conservation. It is simple, it is sweet and it drives the point home. CHILD IN A PAIL POSTER (1980s) Things become a little more subtle. A child in a pail raises issues about water conservation. SECURITY ISSUES PROTECTING SINGAPORE DAY AND NIGHT (1983) OUR ARMED FORCES. BECAUSE A GENERATION'S EFFORTS CAN BE WIPED OUT IN DAYS (1983) Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. These posters produced by the Singapore Armed Forces and the Ministry of Home Affairs drive home the point. WHAT WILL YOU DEFEND? (2009) Slick look and a clever question. Produced by NEXUS (Mindef) as part of the Total Defence Campaign, this latest in the line shows how posters and their underlying messages have evolved over the last 50 years. PUBLIC HEALTH STOP THE HORROR WITH SOAP AND WATER (2009) Produced by the Health Promotion Board, there were complaints when these hard-hitting posters were put up at some bus shelters near primary schools. The board removed the posters and explained that its research had shown that people did not cite handwashing as a way to protect themselves from flu. This poster aimed to show how germs can be present on hands and that handwashing with soap and water would reduce their number - and the likelihood of serious infections.

Copyright © 2007 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved. Privacy Statement & Condition of Access

ST: The making of Men In White (People's Action Party)

Aug 29, 2009

The making of Men In White

A new book on the People's Action Party took three senior journalists more than five years to complete. Backed by four researchers, they conducted 300 interviews and pored over 60 years of press and government records for the 692-page book. Insight finds out about the challenges they faced, what they did to overcome them, and how they put Men In White together.

By Zakir Hussain

The book, which has a print run of 30,000, will be available at leading bookstores after the launch on Sept 8 at $39.90 a copy before GST. THE man was a key player in the formative years of the People's Action Party (PAP). He had been with the party almost from the start and was privy to many of its goings-on. So it was natural that Straits Times writers Sonny Yap, Richard Lim and Leong Weng Kam identified him as a key player they must interview when they started work on a book on the PAP. Unfortunately, the retired politician was known for being reticent and guarded, and for keeping his views to himself since he left politics in the 1980s. The team's initial overtures were rebuffed. It took more than six months of effort before he agreed to speak, Mr Yap, 59, tells Insight. Every now and then, the writers would call up a contact who knew him personally, and the reply would be that he was still pondering over it. Then one day, they had a lucky break. He asked for their list of questions. But it was followed by months of silence. 'In the meantime, whenever we interviewed or met anyone who knew the subject, we would ask them to intercede on our behalf, to convince him that we had no hidden agenda, that the book was not another exercise in PAP propaganda, that we would be fair, objective and balanced,' says Mr Yap. Finally, one night, a contact called to say the subject would like to meet Mr Yap for lunch. That was the breakthrough. 'It was a getting-to-know-you session in which I tried my best to win his confidence,' recalls Mr Yap. 'After that, the first interview was arranged, and we went on for three more interviews and several lunch discussions where he warmly opened up on his role in the PAP. Thanks to his inputs, Men In White is so much more complete, balanced and richer,' he says. Persuaded by Goh Chok Tong IT WAS not just that key player - plus many others who played a part in the PAP's colourful past - who needed to be cajoled, convinced and won over. Mr Yap himself had to be persuaded - by then-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong - to work on the book. He had said no when asked by then-Straits Times editor Leslie Fong. 'I didn't want to wind up my journalistic career by doing a PAP propaganda book,' says Mr Yap, who has more than 30 years of experience in journalism. He was with New Nation, the defunct afternoon tabloid, from 1971 to 1982, before moving to The Straits Times. Over tea at the Istana, Mr Goh assured him the book would be a Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) publication, and was meant to fill a void in Singapore's history for the younger generation. 'He assured me I would have editorial autonomy over the project, and the PAP would be involved only in rendering research assistance,' recounts Mr Yap. He said yes. Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew also repeatedly stressed to the writers throughout the book project, when they interviewed him, that the book was their version of the PAP story, and not the party's. 'Indeed, confidence-building and convincing people that the book was not PAP propaganda were the prerequisites to clinching many of the interviews,' Mr Yap tells Insight. 'Whether they were former PAP or non-PAP players, we knew we had to overcome their initial reactions of scepticism, if not cynicism, doubt, suspicion, belligerence and, occasionally, outright hostility.' Several former PAP politicians, who were still embittered over how they were unceremoniously dropped, said it was pointless to talk about the past and that they wanted to move on. One former PAP stalwart, who helped to rebuild the party during the big split of 1961, slammed down the phone on the writers, saying he had nothing more to do with the party. In 1961, leftist elements broke away from the party and formed Barisan Sosialis. They included 35 out of 51 branches, and 19 out of 23 branch secretaries. There were also former party members who gave scraps of information on the phone, and said they would give a fuller account when they met the writers. But they never responded again to them. Some agreed to an interview but did not turn up at the arranged time and place. Others were extremely cautious, and insisted that every quote used in the book had to be checked back with them. Getting former leftists to agree to interviews was even more challenging, says Mr Yap. 'They assumed that we were engaged in yet another exercise to deify the PAP and demonise the opposition.' Some asked the writers: 'Do you know we had been detained by the PAP Government for many years? Why should we help you do a book on the PAP?' Others asked if the writers were intelligence agents trying to pry more information out of them to use against them. Some demanded to know whether the team would print what they said. 'Some questioned our questions, some questioned the premises underpinning our questions,' recalls Mr Yap. 'How do you define a communist?' and 'Why do you describe so-and-so as a leftist?' were but two questions they encountered. Yet others took issue with the writers' knowledge and ability to do the book. Mr Yap remembers being ushered into the home of a former Barisan Sosialis official, who gestured to a long table with books on Marx, Engels and Lenin, rows of Hansard volumes which carried the verbatim proceedings of legislative assembly sessions in the 1960s, and stacks of speeches and documents. Seeking out former leftists 'HE SAID rather sternly, 'You can't possibly be qualified to write the PAP story until you have read all these. If you don't read them, how can you grasp the context of my replies to your questions?'' Mr Yap recounts the conversation. Another former prominent leftist and political detainee grilled him for 45 minutes before beginning the interview. It turns out he wanted to check Mr Yap's knowledge of Singapore politics and discern his leanings and biases. The interviewee said he had dumped every book on the PAP into the dustbin because whenever he gave interviews to the authors, he found the information given was used to vilify him and the leftist movement. Mr Leong, 55, was also able to draw out former Mandarin-speaking leftists in Singapore and abroad, with his command of the Chinese language. A big help was a series of articles on former politicians from the early years, he says. Called Life After Politics, the series was done shortly before he started on the book. For the series, Mr Leong spoke to a number of former leftists and won their trust and confidence with his balanced portrayals of their life experiences. Many of them put in a good word for him and helped him locate several left-wing leaders of the PAP who had either quietly retired here or had fled Singapore in the 1950s and 1960s. 'Often, one interview would lead to another,' he recalls. Slowly, insights unfolded on key developments in the party's history, like the plots by leftists to seize control. Former Barisan Sosialis leader Fong Swee Suan gave the team the names of people who were deported and are now living in Hong Kong. Mr Leong also spent a week tracking down and interviewing former leftists and members of the Malayan Communist Party in the peace villages in southern Thailand. He travelled with Straits Times executive photographer Wong Kwai Chow, 56. The interviews were an eye-opener, he says. The experience of a key leftist in exile there, Mr Chan Sun Wing, a former top aide to Mr Lee Kuan Yew, forms the prologue of the book. Mr Leong also met former teenage Chinese schoolgirls in pigtails, who were part of the leftist movement here. 'After more than 50 years, those I met in 2003 were frail (some could hardly walk), and in their 60s and 70s. 'One of them told me she was the daughter of a rich businessman in Singapore, living in a big mansion with servants at home and ate very good food every day. But she gave up all that to join the leftist movement, and went underground when security officers were after her,' he recounts. She, with many others, escaped to Indonesia and later joined her compatriots as armed guerillas in jungles along the Malaysian-Thai border. Says Mr Leong: 'They were young and innocent and idealistic, and for that they paid a very high price. 'To this day, they do not think it was wrong,' he adds. Mr Cheong Yip Seng, former editor-in-chief of SPH's English and Malay Newspapers Division, who oversaw much of the work on the book, says he was very pleased that many of the left-wing leaders agreed, some after much persuasion, to be interviewed. 'Nobody has told a non-partisan story of the PAP. It was long overdue,' he says. 'Here was a chance to get a version of the history from the defeated faction of the PAP, the radical left who came so close to winning. If we did not reach out to them, their voices would have been suppressed forever,' he adds. 'By any yardstick, it was a gripping tale. I had lived through part of that history as a journalist and know it had all the ingredients of a thriller,' he says. Mr Cheong also sees the book as a way to reach out to younger Singaporeans. 'My sense is that they have only a vague idea of how Singapore got here,' he adds. The book began life in two parts. Mr Yap and Mr Leong worked on telling the story of the party's early years, while Mr Lim explained how the party consolidated its hold on Singapore. As the book neared completion, they decided to add a third part to examine the party's longevity. 'I was sad we were not able to reach a few, including Mr Lim Chin Siong. He had died before we started,' says Mr Cheong. Mr Fang Chuang Pi, who led the communist underground in Singapore at the time, died in Hat Yai, Thailand, in 2004 before the team could reach him. Ong Eng Guan stays mum THERE were also a handful of party stalwarts who resolutely declined to be interviewed. Among them was the first mayor of Singapore, Mr Ong Eng Guan. Mr Leong visited his office to speak to him, and managed only to put in a word with his wife who said she would get him to call back. He never did. Many key players, however, shared their stories willingly, and extended their help and assistance in recommending and persuading former comrades to speak. They helped the writers to get in touch with past players lost in the mist of time, and gave them access to their memorabilia. 'At their age, they knew that if they didn't give their side of the story, it would pass into eternal oblivion,' notes Mr Yap. But one major challenge was that many of the subjects interviewed were in their 70s, 80s and even 90s. Their memories were fading, if not failing. As a result, the writers had to fill in the blanks and counter-check what the subjects said against other accounts and research. 'Often, we had to jolt their memories. Some asked for newspaper clippings to help them refresh their memories,' recalls Mr Yap. 'We were often confronted with conflicting and contradictory accounts, and trying to reconcile them posed a tremendous challenge for the team.' They had to cross-check recollections and details with other interviews, news reports and records. But notes of their early eventful meetings could not be located with any of the founding members or with the party headquarters. The notes could have been destroyed to avoid them falling into the hands of the Special Branch, misplaced when the party headquarters moved, or taken away by defectors when the party split. The lack of records left the writers, in some cases, with no way of ascertaining whose version was right, such as how the founders came up with the party logo. So, they opted to reflect the various individuals' views on the matter and left it at that. Still, the authors say the book would have been harder to write if it were done, say, 10 years earlier. In this case, the distance of time helped. 'Former leftists may not have opened up earlier,' says Mr Leong. Even as the writers were busy arranging interviews, the team of researchers led by former Straits Times journalist Leong Ching, 40, was hard at work. They trawled the National Archives and the archives of unions and universities, tracked down people the writers wanted to interview, and hunted down odd pieces of information for close to four years. They also combed through Malay- and Chinese-language newspapers which reported on the PAP's internal struggles. Others on the research team were Ms Goh Sue Lin and Ms Tan Mui Ling, both 29, graduates from the National University of Singapore who also helped to provide translations of Chinese reports. Veteran journalist Sia Boon So, who is fluent in English, Chinese and Malay, was also on the team and translated many Malay newspaper reports. Berita Harian and Tamil Murasu journalists also helped in explaining Malay and Tamil materials. Ms Leong notes that there were some disappointments - such as when the families of key players declined to give the team access to their taped interviews deposited with the National Archives. As a younger Singaporean, she felt that the climate of political awakening in the 1950s and 1960s made the process of research exciting. 'I spent hours in the dark halls of the oral history department, listening to the voices and reading the transcripts of men long dead, describing their dreams and passions, and their version of what happened,' she says. 'Politics in those days was literally a matter of life and death - and many lost their lives in the struggle,' she says. Ms Leong, a PhD candidate at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, adds: 'It has been said that history is written by the victors. Actually, in the course of doing the research for this book, I realise that history is written by those who take the trouble and have the resources and the will to strive for a more perfect understanding. 'Working towards providing a complete version of history is not possible, but I believe the resources SPH put into this book make this as close as possible to any historically accurate version now or in future,' she says. Ms Leong notes that while the early years of the party were rich in stories, its later years were nearer what people would treasure and remember. 'What makes a good story doesn't always make good public policy,' she quips. Changes after 1984 election MR LIM, 60, admits he had an easier task persuading people to talk, as many PAP leaders and MPs were forthcoming. PAP ministers, in particular MM Lee, Senior Minister Goh and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong gave a considerable amount of their time in several interviews with the writers. Mr Lim worked on the chapters which looked at the years when the party was firmly in control. At times, politicians shared bits of information that had never been made public. The challenge, he notes, was trying to make the narrative nearly as exciting as the chapters on the party's early years. It helped that the party gave him access to its confidential post-mortem report of the 1984 General Election, which marked a turning point in the PAP's post-independence history. 'It was a no-holds-barred report,' says Mr Lim, who saw in it a blueprint for the PAP's subsequent direction towards a more consultative style. At that election, the PAP saw a steep plunge in support: It garnered 64.8 per cent of the vote, a plunge of 12.8 per cent from the 1980 election. Two opposition candidates - Mr J.B. Jeyaretnam in Anson and Mr Chiam See Tong in Potong Pasir - were victorious and the PAP lost the political dominance it had enjoyed since 1968. 'We tempted fate,' the party said in the report, which was made public for the first time for the book. 'Had it not been for the tremendous depth of support which PAP enjoyed, we would have been voted out of office,' it said. The Government had rolled out one controversial policy after another in that election year - from steps to favour graduate mothers to a report that proposed raising the retirement age from 55 to 60, then 65 and consequently pushing back the age when people could withdraw their Central Provident Fund savings. The post-mortem was put together by a team set up by then-assistant secretary-general Goh Chok Tong, and chaired by Mr Ong Teng Cheong who went on to become second deputy prime minister and elected president. The report was written up by Mr Lee Hsien Loong, who was a first-time candidate. It made recommendations on what the party should do to rebuild the support it had enjoyed, and these proposals were reflected in many of the changes to the PAP's style in the late 1980s to early 1990s. The party had to revamp its image, engage people emotionally, and stop harping on the quality of its candidates as this reinforced the perception that its super-achievers were too removed from the ground. But it also had to accept that 'the opposition is here to stay' - and the party should try to maintain a large and stable majority rather than eliminate the opposition altogether. 'Instant rapport' with white outfits AS THE interviews progressed, Straits Times verbatim reporters Gavin Chua, Simon Tan and Serene Ng rendered the taped voices, accents and intonations into ready-to-use transcripts. Over several years, they produced hundreds of transcripts. The writers decided to use their reportorial techniques and go for a 'voices approach'. They would speak to as many people as possible who were involved in the PAP and reflect their views and versions of events. Mr Yap and Mr Leong worked on telling the story of the party's early years, while Mr Lim would narrate the later years and explain how the party consolidated its position. By August 2006, drafts for these two parts of the book were completed and ready to go, but Mr Cheong decided to bring the story up to date by including recent developments, including the general election that year. A decision was made to do a second book on PAP governance - to trace the origins, evolution and implementation of the key principles underpinning the party's rule of Singapore. But this idea was scrapped, and replaced by a third part on PAP governance and survival. At the same time, updates and revisions were made to the earlier parts, and the writers had to do their own research. They also settled on Men In White as the title. Mr Yap recounts how at the PAP's inauguration at Victoria Memorial Hall on Nov 21, 1954, many members of the audience were taken aback by the sight of the party's founding members and convenors striding onstage in white open-necked shirts and cotton trousers. They had expected to see them in ties and suits. 'That struck an instant rapport with the people, as one interviewee told me,' he says, adding that the party whites have since been a defining element of the PAP till today. The drafts were completed late last year, and the final okay was given for each and every page in June before the book went to press this month. Mr Cheong, who guided the team, was glad the writers produced many gripping inside stories. 'The PAP was also generous with its time, and their leaders spent many hours with the team,' he adds. Says the book's editor, Ms Lee Mei Lin of publishing company Marshall Cavendish which was involved in the production and design of the book: 'Editing the book was worth every minute because there was new information to read about and much to discover all over again.' Says Straits Times editor Han Fook Kwang: 'It wasn't difficult supervising this project. 'The material was compelling and the writers were very seasoned. My job was to move the project along, make sure there were no large gaps in the story and act as a sounding board for the writers to bounce off their ideas.' Adds Mr Han: 'We usually think of the PAP in organisational terms, how effective it is as a party and what its ideology was. 'But if you read the book, you'll find that it's mainly about people who believed in what they were fighting for - both for and against the PAP leadership - and were not afraid to step forward because they wanted a better future for Singapore.' The writers captured this spirit, and the process of chronicling it is best reflected in their acknowledgements in the book. They said: 'It was indeed the ride of a lifetime.' zakirh@sph.com.sg

===

A TALE FROM DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE 'Nobody has told a non-partisan story of the PAP. It was long overdue. Here was a chance to get a version of the history from the defeated faction of the PAP, the radical left who came so close to winning. If we did not reach out to them, their voices would have been suppressed forever. By any yardstick, it was a gripping tale. I had lived through part of that history as a journalist and know it had all the ingredients of a thriller.' Mr Cheong Yip Seng (above), former editor-in-chief of SPH's English and Malay Newspapers Division Copyright © 2007 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved. Privacy Statement & Condition of Access

ST: Natural history, a common heritage

Natural history, a common heritage

Aug 22, 2009

Exhibition at Botanic Gardens showcases the region's rich biodiversity

By Chin See Chung

The Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research houses one of the world's largest collections of South-east Asian species. The museum is located on the National University of Singapore campus. -- ST PHOTO: JOYCE FANG THE profusion and diversity of life forms, geological features and the human cultures that they encountered in their travels were the keys that stimulated the intellectual processes of both Charles Darwin and his Victorian compatriot, Alfred Russel Wallace. They both searched for a mechanism to explain long-term organic change. Darwin spent almost five years circumnavigating the globe, observing, documenting and thinking about his ideas on evolution. He explored coastal areas of both sides of South America, visited the Galapagos and crossed the Pacific landing at Tahiti, New Zealand and Australia before returning via the Indian and Atlantic oceans. Wallace, on the other hand, spent four years in the Amazon, exploring, collecting and documenting. He unfortunately lost almost everything he collected in a fire while sailing back. He then spent eight years on a great number of islands in the Malay Archipelago, where he amassed a treasure trove of more than 125,000 natural history specimens. Wallace and Darwin were greatly influenced by the intellectuals of the time and the growing momentum of scientific thought, seeking alternatives to the Church's thinking on the origin of life. French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, as early as 1809 in his Philosophie Zoologique, proposed a theory to explain natural change. Central to his thesis is that traits acquired during an individual's lifetime could be passed on to its offspring. Though since discredited, this was part of the growing body of thinking on the subject. By 1840, a clear picture of the fossil record had emerged. There was indisputable evidence that there is a progression from the primitive invertebrates to the fish, reptiles and finally mammals, with many going extinct and others appearing. Creation in a single period, 'in the beginning', did not seem tenable. Charles Lyell's three-volume book, Principles Of Geology (1830-1833), one of the most important scientific books of the 19th century, outlined the geological forces that shaped the Earth over vast periods of time. It challenged prevailing thinking that the Earth was shaped by supernatural events, such as Noah's flood. In the anonymously published 1844 book, Vestiges Of The Natural History Of Creation, (actually by Robert Chambers), was the audacious suggestion that humans had emerged from lowly animals, albeit by divine design. While this book offended, it did not offer a biological mechanism for change. Another influential book was An Essay On The Principle Of Population, by Reverend Thomas Malthus, first published anonymously in 1798. Malthus had postulated that population growth would always exceed the growth of food supply, leading to hunger, disease and a struggle for survival resulting in a situation that would limit population growth. Malthus' idea of 'struggle for survival' directly influenced both Wallace and Darwin. While it appeared to have directed Darwin's thinking towards the theory of natural selection, it was the trigger that crystallised Wallace's thoughts. In February 1858, after four years of exploring the Malay Archipelago, Wallace was sick with malaria in the Maluku islands, east of Sulawesi, and was thinking about the ideas of Malthus. He suddenly linked this to a mechanism that would ensure long-term organic change. This was the concept of 'variation and the survival of the fittest'. Individuals that are better adapted would have a better chance of surviving. This is the process of 'natural selection'. It was the fundamental process leading to the origin of new species. Wallace immediately drafted a paper and wrote to Darwin with his ideas. Darwin had explored the same theories for 20 years and was writing a book on this subject but had not publicly presented his thoughts. He was advised to present Wallace's paper together with his own at the next meeting of the Linnaean Society, the world's oldest biological society, in London on July 1, 1858. He was also forced to prepare his book for publication. This book that changed the world, On The Origin Of Species, was published in November 1859, 150 years ago. The theory of natural selection remained controversial throughout the rest of the 19th century. It was only in the early 20th century, when Mendelian genetics was able to explain the inheritance of specific traits that rendered certain organisms 'fitter' and thus 'selected' to replace the unfit, that acceptance became widespread. In 1869, Wallace published his book, The Malay Archipelago, one of the greatest natural history travel books of the 19th century. His travels gave birth to his ideas on the theory of evolution. And he made significant contributions to biogeography when he linked the geographical distribution of animals and plants to the regions' geological history. While in Singapore, Wallace explored Bukit Timah and, in two months, caught 700 species of beetles. The incredible productivity of Bukit Timah is an illustration that we live in a region with one of the richest biodiversities in the world. It is a diversity that the Botanic Gardens was designed to celebrate in all its manifestations. This year we are holding special events to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Gardens, which shares the same anniversary with the publication of On The Origin Of Species, Darwin's 200th birth anniversary and the 140th anniversary of Wallace's book, The Malay Archipelago. It is therefore apt that the Gardens has staged an exhibition on Wallace and Darwin. 'Two Minds One Theory' illustrates the region's rich biodiversity and the beauty of natural life, and tells the story of the theory of evolution, to generate awareness and interest in biodiversity and inspire an ethos for conservation. Natural history unlocked the door to the evolutionary theory. In Singapore, the Raffles Museum, built in 1887, was the repository of some of these records. It was an institution of magnificent displays on zoology and ethnography and a centre of scholarship, especially before the World War II years. It was one of the few institutions in Singapore protected when so much was destroyed during the war. The museum's collections were dismantled in 1969 and its collections dispersed. The single most outstanding exhibit was the skeleton of a blue whale which, if I remember correctly as a child, hung over the grand main staircase. Exhibited since 1903, this national icon etched itself into the memories of generations of Singaporeans. Ms Lee Chor Lin, the director of the National Museum, wrote in 2007 that the memory of the whale lived on even for people born after the whale's departure from the museum. Today, what remains is largely hidden in storage vaults awaiting permanent public airing. Natural history, the organisms from the different evolutionary stages and the evolutionary processes are our common heritage. It is a heritage that children, with their imagination unfettered by cultural norms and artefacts, instinctively identify with. They would love to be let loose in such a museum in all its glory. The writer is the director of Singapore Botanic Gardens

Copyright © 2007 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved. Privacy Statement & Condition of Access

FT: The history of the Times New Roman typeface

The history of the Times New Roman typeface

By Joel Alas

Published: August 1 2009 01:56 | Last updated: August 1 2009 02:01

A leading authority on type, Mike Parker is convinced that William Starling Burgess created the font we now know as Times New Roman

In his apartment overlooking the fishing docks of Portland, Maine, Mike Parker was putting the final touches to a font, thinning a few obstinate serifs and thickening some delicate stems. The typeface he was working on was instantly recognisable, even to those with no interest in letterform. It looked just like Times New Roman. Yet on Parker’s sample sheet it was marked by a different name. “I call it Starling, after the man who originally drew it,” he said.

The release of Starling in June presented not just a new font, but a challenge to the accepted history of one of the most widely used typefaces in the world. And after a lifetime spent in typography, Parker was well aware of the controversy he was getting involved in: typography may present a genteel exterior, but it’s an art form punctuated by bitter rivalries and rampant plagiarism.

EDITOR’S CHOICE

More from Reportage - Nov-24

The case that Parker makes about the real origins of Times New Roman stands on narrow foundations. The sole piece of surviving evidence for his version of history is a brass pattern plate bearing a large capital letter B. He holds the plate up to show the familiar form of the letter, its characteristic curves and serifs. The point, he says, is that such pattern plates represent a technology that was not used after 1915. The creation of Times New Roman was announced in 1932.

Eighty-year-old Parker is one of the world’s leading experts on type. As the head of typographic development at the once-formidable Mergenthaler Linotype company in New York from the 1950s to the 1970s, he had enormous influence over the fonts available to the American public. It was his decision to introduce Helvetica to the Linotype library, creating a design legacy still evident today. But ever since he received an invitation in the early 1990s to view some interesting archival material, Parker’s time has been consumed by the hunt to solve a mystery.

The invitation came from the late Gerald Giampa, an eccentric Canadian master printer who, in 1987, purchased the remnants of the Lanston Monotype company. Giampa delved into the company’s archive, where he claimed to have unearthed documents that refer to a typeface known only as Number 54 – the font, Parker says, that we now know as Times New Roman. Except that these documents dated from 1904, and bore the name of a different designer: William Starling Burgess.

“Gerald sent me some pattern plates and said, ‘Do these look familiar?’” Parker said. “I said ‘yes, they’re Times Roman.’ He said, ‘No, they’re much earlier than that.’”

William Starling Burgess was born into a wealthy Boston family in 1878, and is best remembered as an accomplished naval and aeronautical designer, the builder of yachts for the America’s Cup and aircraft for the Wright brothers. But before embarking on his stellar career on wind and water, Parker believes Burgess had a short but brilliant dalliance with typography.

William Starling Burgess

When Giampa started investigating the Lanston Monotype archives, he claimed to have found correspondence between the company and Burgess, who, in 1904, ordered the manufacture of a font series to be used for company documents at his shipyard in Marblehead, Massachusetts. But before Lanston Monotype could complete the order, Giampa claimed, Burgess witnessed an early flight by the Wright brothers and abandoned his interest in type in favour of aviation. His original drawings were filed at the company as Number 54, and remained on a shelf for years.

Parker says that in 1921 Lanston Monotype tried unsuccessfully to sell the Number 54 font to a fledgling news magazine called Time. Sometime after that, Burgess’s drawings fell into the hands of Stanley Morison, a type consultant at the Monotype Corporation in Britain, by way of Frank Hinman Pierpont, an American who managed that company’s factory in Surrey and who made a career out of reviving old fonts.

In the early 1900s typography was progressing rapidly, but newspapers were failing to keep up with the advances. The Times of London used a chunky serif font that was hard on the eye and wasteful of ink and paper. When Morison criticised The Times for its typeface in 1929, the newspaper challenged him to come up with something better. In his writings, Morison says that he looked to old-style fonts for inspiration, and set upon modifying a 16th-century typeface called Plantin. A sketch sheet was handed to Victor Lardent, a staff illustrator for The Times, who finalised the design. The Morison-Lardent drawings were accepted, and on October 3 1932, The Times went to print with its proud new typeface.

Other accounts, however, suggest that the redesign was far more challenging than Morison admitted. He went through countless failed prototypes and even sought help from outside designers, including the eminent typographer Harry Carter, who sketched some proposals. Years later Carter’s son, Matthew, himself a celebrated typographer, found those rejected sketch sheets languishing in his father’s sock drawer. “When I asked what happened to them, my father just laughed and said Morison had never said a word in reply,” Carter recalls. Parker believes he knows why Harry Carter’s drawings were turned down – Morison had by then been supplied with the pilfered designs of Number 54 by Pierpont. Precisely how Pierpont came upon them, Parker cannot say, but he stands by the theory. “Morison knew no bounds,” says Parker, who has numerous anecdotes about their many encounters that paint a picture of a cunning and devious man. Morison never took credit for designing the font himself, but claims only to have “excogitated” it. Years after its release, he wrote of the only font that he is credited with designing: “It has the merit of not looking as if it had been designed by somebody in particular.”

To date, no one but Giampa and Parker have claimed to have seen most of the evidence that supports the Burgess story. Sadly, no one else is likely to have the chance to verify their claims. In 1918, a fire tore through Burgess’s shipyard, incinerating any documents that might have shed light on his activities during 1904, when Parker suggests he made the original drawings for the new font. On the other side of the Atlantic, a bomb blast near the London offices of Monotype Corporation in 1941 destroyed much information about Morison’s activities during the redesign of The Times’s typeface.

The surviving brass pattern plate at the centre of the font controversy

All that remained were the Lanston Monotype archives in Giampa’s possession, until they too met with disaster. In January 2000, Giampa’s house was flooded, and a century’s worth of printing history was lost. “The bulk of the files ended up in a dumpster,” Giampa said. There is a second archive of Lanston Monotype drawings at The Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC, but it has been placed off limits. Parker visited The Smithsonian in 1996 and took copies of the Number 54 drawings, upon which he based his Starling font. Today, the originals of those drawings are in the Smithsonian’s archival warehouse, which is contaminated by asbestos and lead, and has been closed indefinitely.

In typography, there is no greater insult than the accusation of plagiarism. When Parker began circulating his theory about the origins of Times New Roman, he was howled down by a chorus of critics. British author Nicolas Barker, Morison’s biographer, labelled it “a misguided attempt to adjust history”. “It’s the creation of Mike Parker, who did it partly as a practical joke, and partly to help his friend Gerald Giampa,” Barker says. “Giampa was the potential beneficiary. Had he been able to demonstrate that the design had predated the UK version, there was the possibility to establish a patentable right to the designs, at least in the USA. That’s the only logical reason I can see for them wanting to produce this otherwise rather childish joke.” Parker responds that Barker is a “friend of Monotype” who has written many books and articles about Morison.

Barker and others say Parker has failed to produce any conclusive proof of his theory, but only colourful speculation based on unseen documents. Other critics include Jim Rimmer, a Canadian type craftsman based near Vancouver, who labelled Giampa a “pathological liar”. Rimmer said he had known Giampa for 35 years and called him a “prankster” who created the Burgess story “as a way of making himself look important”.

Matthew Carter, designer of the fonts Georgia and Verdana, is among those who believe the Burgess theory is “very plausible”. He has strong memories of Stanley Morison, a man he believes would stoop to such levels of deception. “I knew Morison and the company [British Monotype], and they were the most arrogant organisation in their heyday,” Carter says. “Morison was a very complex character. He liked playing jokes. He was interested in power, and he liked working behind the scenes. I can believe – though I still don’t know the truth – that he would have enjoyed taking part in a ruse like this.”

Top to bottom: A comparison of Times New Roman (Monotype 1931), Starling and Plantin (Monotype 1913, after Granjon ca. 1567).

The Times newspaper itself has begun accepting the possibility of an alternative history to its famous font. In 2007, the newspaper stated that Times New Roman was designed by Stanley Morison, Victor Lardent “and possibly Starling Burgess”.

Before his death in late June, Giampa defended his reputation. From behind the counter of an antique and curiosity shop on the Vancouver waterfront, the colourful Canadian printer said he had “absolutely not” fabricated the Burgess story, but that it was based on the documents and pattern plates he had unearthed in the Lanston Monotype archive. All of those records were lost in the flood on Prince Edward Island, he said, aside from one pattern plate in the possession of Mike Parker. It is upon this pattern plate that the entire Burgess theory now hangs.

Along with the Starling roman font, Parker has released a matching italic series. He says that in 1904 Burgess drew just five letters of an italic to accompany Number 54 before abandoning typography for aviation. Parker has taken it upon himself to finish the job and has spent the past few years carefully drawing the graceful slanted figures of a rich italic.

“Morison’s was a dog of an italic,” he says of the existing Times New Roman version, which he accepts was a Morison-Lardent creation. “It didn’t match the roman at all. It was a standard Monotype italic.” Now Parker has set out to rectify this by giving the world’s most popular font – no matter its name or creator – a deserving italic. Aside from the five inspirational characters, this is wholly Parker’s own work and, remarkably, it is his maiden typographic creation. Throughout his decades in the industry, Parker remained a creative administrator and researcher but was never himself a typographer.

And this, perhaps, is the real force behind Parker’s enthusiasm for the William Starling Burgess story: it has given him, for the first time, the chance to create a font of his own.

Joel Alas is a freelance writer and editor based in Berlin

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009